H-Diplo Review Essay 621: Muschik on Thomas, _The End of Empires and a World Remade_H-Diplo Review Essay 621 Martin Thomas. The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization. Princeton University Press, 2024. ISBN: 9780691190921. 20 March 2025 | PDF: https://hdiplo.org/to/E621 | X: @HDiplo | BlueSky: @h-diplo.bsky.social Editor: Diane Labrosse Review by Eva-Maria Muschik, University of Vienna Martin Thomas’s The End of Empires is a rich book. Drawing on a wide range of English-language scholarship and a broad base of European archival materials, Thomas puts the issue of violence front and center and reminds us that twentieth-century decolonization was a globally connected process, but not strictly speaking a post-1945 phenomenon. In his understanding, it is also not a finished process. The emphasis throughout the book is on politics, especially individual conflicts, but also transnational networking and international law, economic matters, and the sociology of violence. Readers interested in learning more about the people, ideas, and culture that animated the global history of decolonization may need to turn elsewhere. Thomas describes decolonization as not a single event, but a “process of ending empire and breaking with colonialism” (2). More specifically, his book is concerned with the end of twentieth-century oceanic empires mostly after 1945. “The story of these collapses,” he writes, “is the history of decolonization” (16). With this focus of the book, as opposed to, say, the break-up of European land empires during and after World War I or empires in the Americas in the preceding centuries, Thomas follows Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel’s argument: that the twentieth-century breakdown of oceanic empires was the most consequential “wave” of decolonization, for it resulted in the “disappearance of empire as a political form” and the “end of racial hierarchy as a widely accepted political ideology and structuring principle of world order” (16).[1] For Thomas, decolonization “stands alongside the twentieth century’s world wars, the Cold War, and the longer arc of globalization as one of the four great determinants of geopolitical change in living memory” (16). Indeed, he argues, it represents the “biggest reconfiguration of world politics ever seen” (7). Thomas maintains that “decolonization was one globally connected process” and that “we cannot understand decolonization’s global impact by examining individual empires or single colonial histories,” with the caveat added later that “decolonization unfolded globally but contingently” (3, 40). Hence, the global history angle. There are, of course, many discussions about what global history actually means.[2] For Thomas, it seems, global history is not primarily concerned with de-centering European perspectives on a given subject.[3](Somewhat indicative of this stance, the book opens and closes with the perspective of British politician Barbara Castle.) Rather, Thomas defines the approach of global history as “rejecting the nation-state as the analytical starting point and focusing instead on…entanglements of peoples, ideas, and discriminations” (15, my emphasis). As chapter 2 lays out, Thomas is moreover concerned with convergence or “globalization,” which he understands to be “the acceleration of global integration” (27). He suggests that “we need to locate decolonization both chronologically and in relation to” this process (26) and attempts to “unscramble conflicting perspectives on which of these processes—either decolonization or globalization—accelerated or even catalyzed the other” (27).[4] He concludes somewhat defeatedly, however:
Without weighing in on the matter himself, Thomas cautions against understanding globalization as a one-way traffic (from Europe to the rest of the world) and underestimating the extent to which decolonization reorganized the world (45). He does not explicitly discuss globalization in the rest of the book, but returns to aspects which are associated with it, e.g. economic integration, in the chapters that follow. According to Thomas, the book seeks, first, to explain “what brought down European overseas empires”—that is, the causes of decolonization, and in particular the global factors that either accelerated or slowed down the process (4, 335)—and, second, to “work out how much changed when [foreign colonial rulers] left or were compelled to go” (3)—that is, the global impact of decolonization. This is arguably a mammoth task. With regard to the second question of impact, Thomas’ main argument seems to be—as the title indicates—that the world was remade as empire was undone. But he argues that decolonization remains unfinished first, because of unequal power relations rooted in colonial-era hierarchies; second, because of enduring patterns of colonial thought, speech, and behavior; and third, because of lasting economic inequalities rooted in empire (349). Overall, the book is less concerned with what the “world remade” looked like, than with “paths of empire destruction.” In answer to his first question about causes, or “factors that triggered colonial collapse,” Thomas presents a somewhat eclectic bucket list that includes issues of political economy, anticolonial opposition and rights claims, the two World Wars, territorial partitions, pro- and anti-colonial violence, and the vulnerability of colonial civilians (5). Thomas concedes that the list could be longer and could include, for example, questions of identity and culture, gender and ethnicity, ideology and ethics, geopolitics, international organization, and the global Cold War, and that it is the historian’s task to distinguish between major and minor factors among all of the above. Yet Thomas does not explicitly reveal where he comes down on this question, nor how this sets his book apart from existing literature on the topic.[5] To me, Thomas’s list of causal factors is confusing rather than clarifying. Some of them cannot be neatly separated from one another. For example, “issues of global political economy,” as Thomas discusses in the book, resulted to a large extent from the “transformative aftereffects of two world wars” (5). It is also unclear how partitions were a cause rather than an effect of the end of empire. Is it the case that we cannot determine causal factors for the global process of decolonization as such, but have to look at individual processes of decolonization after all to determine the relative weight of factors? The organization of the book departs from that of comparative titles:[6] The introductory part I, “Globalizing Decolonization,” Thomas explains, deals with “ideas and concepts” (4) of both scholars and historical actors: chapter 1 discusses the term “decolonization,” chapter 2 focuses on the relationship between globalization and decolonization (thus going beyond “ideas and concepts”), and chapter 3 presents “alternatives” (4) to decolonization, as in historical alternatives to national sovereignty claims, including, for example, empire citizenship reform, pooled sovereignty polities (federations, regional associations), and global governance mechanisms. The much longer part II, “Paths of Empire Destruction,” proceeds roughly chronologically from the impact of World War One (chapter 4) to that of World War Two (chapter 7), with a mix of more thematic and geographically focused chapters in between and after: chapters 5, 12, and 13 deal with the economic effects of the wars and with interwar and postwar political decisions. In a very welcome addition to the more familiar focus in the literature on development, Thomas discusses global trade, debt, and monetary arrangements here. He also engages the burgeoning scholarship on the push for a New International Economic Order.[7] Chapters 6 and 14 focus on key sites, concerns, and moments of transnational anti-colonial networking and activism, from interwar Communist internationalism, to the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955, the founding of the Non-Alignment Movement in Belgrade in 1961, and the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in 1966. Other important milestones and organizations in this regard, such as the 1900 Pan-African Congress, the League against Imperialism, and the Group of 77, are discussed in chapters 4 and 13. The remaining chapters, in one way or another, discuss the violence of decolonization. Chapter 8 deals with post-World War Two conflicts in South East Asia. Chapter 9 discusses partitions. Chapter 10 focuses on decolonization wars of the 1950s and 1960s in Kenya, Vietnam, and Algeria, which, as Thomas underlines, imperial powers tried to hide from public attention. Chapter 11 shines the spotlight on the civilians who bore the brunt of decolonization violence. The concluding chapter 15 discusses “endgames” of empire in the Portuguese and Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Ocean island territories. To my mind, the guiding questions or focus are not always comprehensibly explained in the chapter introductions. Many topics and events surface in various chapters, and the chapter conclusions often bring in new aspects and actors rather than summarizing the main points made. Much prior contextual knowledge regarding historical actors and events is required of the reader. Compared to other titles on this topic, Thomas’s book is thus not an easy introductory read, even if it is certainly a worthwhile, thought-provoking one.[8] A real strength of the book is that, in line with his own earlier research plus other recent publications on imperial history more generally,[9] Thomas convincingly reveals that a panoply of violence is central to the history of decolonization, from psychological to physiological, from economical to ecological, from military to civilian. This is a story of mass displacement, forced labor and migration, hunger, disease, and ecological devastation related to both imperial economic exploitation and mismanagement as well as war efforts, which fueled both resistance against empire and rising tensions among the various groups within colonial societies. Chapter 7, which focuses on World War Two, serves as something of a hinge chapter for Thomas’s second major intervention: “The logic of the Second World War as decolonization’s catalytic agent is flawed because the disintegrative process had begun decades earlier,” Thomas writes, and the preceding chapters serve his point. But his argument is also forward-looking: Decolonization “would play out for decades more” (124). Building on Robert Gerwarth’s work on World War I,[10] Thomas’s “proposition is that wartime cataclysm did not—indeed, could not—‘cause’ decolonization after 1945 because there was no clear division between war and postwar.” Notions of “empires at peace” or “peacetime colonialism” are thus misleading (125). As he writes, “the war itself persisted, mutating into other violent anti-colonial struggles” (132). The chapters that follow amply prove his point that the transition-of-power narrative sanitizes the history of decolonization, which “was anything but transitory or clean” (171). Throughout the book, Thomas raises and discusses several important questions that are related to the extent to which international law, humanitarian actors, and international organizations served to shape (if not mitigate) decolonization violence and vice versa and what role anti-colonial violence played in bringing down empire. A key section comes in chapter 13, where Thomas rejects the narrative of a “managed” decolonization in the sense of a process being set in motion and directed by imperial authorities (263). Empire was brought down by its opponents, Thomas notes. But he also allows for a correlation between European economic decline and retrenchment overseas (263). Frederick Cooper has argued that by the late 1950s, imperial authorities began to consider the developmental colonialism of the post-1945 period too expensive to maintain.[11]Thomas’s account adds to this analysis the fact that decolonization violence also “punched big deficits into imperial balance sheets,” whether they are “measured in money or reputation” (266). This is also where factors such as transnational activism, global public fora like the ones affiliated with the United Nations, and international law, come in. Because of this mix of factors, Thomas suggests, “finding partners to show the way out [became] more advantageous than trying to stay in” from the metropolitan perspective (267).[12] Because Thomas’s narrative is largely concerned with the “paths of empire destruction,” I was left wondering about the impact or legacies of the violence of decolonization in the post-independence era in terms of authoritarian regimes, civil wars, social and economic disruptions, foreign interventionism, etc. This question is especially pertinent in view of the unfinished “decolonial” pursuit of achieving economic sovereignty and prosperity, be it through national projects, federal or regional arrangements, or changing the institutions of global governance. Thomas’s book thus raises several crucial questions about the global history of decolonization that—building on his important work—may be further tackled down the line.
Eva-Maria Muschik is a historian and Assistant Professor in the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. She is the author of Building States: The United Nations, Development, and Decolonization, 1945–1965 (Columbia University Press, 2022), the special issue introduction “Towards a Global History of International Organizations and Decolonization,” published in the Journal of Global History in 2022, and co-editor of the forthcoming volume International Organizations and the Cold War: Competition, Cooperation and Convergence(Bloomsbury, 2025).
[1] Jan Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel, Decolonization: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2017), 1. [2] For a most recent discussion, see Stefanie Gänger and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Rethinking Global History(Cambridge University Press, 2024). [3] For a contrasting understanding of global history, see, for example, Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History?(Princeton University Press, 2016), 67. [4] An engagement with another book that is co-authored by Jürgen Osterhammel might have been insightful here: Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2021), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400824328. [5] See, for example,Muriel Evelyn Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires (Blackwell, 2004); Prasenjit Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (Rewriting Histories) (Routledge, 2004); Dietmar Rothermund, The Routledge Companion to Decolonization (Routledge, 2006); Martin Shipway, Decolonization and Its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Blackwell, 2008) as well as recent introductory books cited in footnote 9. [6] See footnotes 6 and 9. [7] Giuliano Garavini, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South 1957–1986 (Oxford University Press, 2012); Nils Gilman, “The New International Economic Order: A Re-Introduction,” Humanity: An International Journal for Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6:1 (2015): 1-16; Christopher Dietrich, “Oil Power and Economic Theologies: The United States and the Third World in the Wake of the Energy Crisis,” Diplomatic History 40:3 (2016): 500-529; Jonas Kreienbaum, Das Öl und der Kampf um eine Neue Weltwirtschaftsordnung – Die Bedeutung der Ölkrisen der 1970er Jahre für die Nord-Süd-Beziehungen (De Gruyter, 2022); Michael Franczak, Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s (Cornell University Press, 2022). [8] Dane Kennedy, Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016); Jansen and Osterhammel, Decolonization. [9] See, for example, Martin Thomas, Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and the Roads from Empire (Oxford University Press, 2014); Thomas and Gareth Curless, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Late Colonial Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies (Oxford University Press, 2023); Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (The Bodley Head, 2022); Lauren Benton, They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton University Press, 2024). [10] Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End: 1917–1923 (Allen Lane, 2016). [11] Frederick Cooper, “Writing the History of Development,” Journal of Modern European History 8:1 (2010): 5-23, here 15. [12] For a similar argument on the interwar period, see Susan Pedersen, “Getting out of Iraq—in 1932: The League of Nations and the Road to Normative Statehood,” The American Historical Review 115:4 (2010): 975-1000, here 975. |
domingo, 23 de março de 2025
Book review: o fim do colonialismo - Martin Thomas: The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization; review by Eva-Maria Muschik
O problema com a Oxfam - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
O problema da OXFAM consiste simplesmente em atribuir as desigualdades realmente existentes à riqueza exagerada de uns poucos, como se a ambição dessa minoria fosse capaz de superar políticas públicas ordenadas ao que é realmente importante decidir: a missão mais nobre da economia política não consiste em empobrecer os mais ricos para produzir uma esperada igualdade de condições, mas sim em formular e implementar políticas educacionais suscetíveis de enriquecer os mais pobres, e assim reduzir, não eliminar, as desigualdades advindas de situações de origem amplamente diversas.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 22/03/2025
Uma constatação necessária: um genocídio "desnecessário" - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Uma constatação necessária: um genocídio "desnecessário"
Alguns dos meus amigos judeus, ou israelenses (não é a mesma coisa), vão reclamar desta minha postagem, mas vou explicitar a acusação, não ao Estado de Israel ou a seu povo (árabes e israelenses), mas ao seu atual governo FASCISTA, de claro e direto GENOCÍDIO contra o povo palestino, a pretexto de eliminar os terroristas que se imiscuíram na população dos territórios ILEGALMENTE ocupados por Israel (sim, eu sei, ao cabo de guerras deslanchadas contra o Estado judeu décadas atrás).
O povo palestino não pode levar a culpa por alguns atentados bárbaros que algumas lideranças TERRORISTAS impuseram sobre todo o povo israelense e sobre o povo palestino.
O povo israelense, judeus e não judeus, não pode levar a culpa pelos CRIMES CONTRA A HUMANIDADE sendo perpetrados por um CRIMINOSO DE GUERRA, que merece um julgamento ao estilo de Nuremberg, ao lado de Putin e outros assassinos.
A humanidade não merece o que vem sendo imposto a ela por ditadores, criminosos de guerra ou por simples IMBECIS, um deles nem preciso nomear.
O atual governo israelense está criando (pelo menos) uma geração de terroristas, mas a ONU e o sistema multilateral não conseguem fazer nada, sequer contra a maciça destruição imposta ao povo ucraniano, sequer EXPELIR os Estados terroristas da organição.
Golbery do Couto e Silva foi o gênio não reconhecido da ditadura militar? - Golbery do Couto e Silva Neto e Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Golbery do Couto e Silva foi o gênio não reconhecido da ditadura militar?
Golbery do Couto e Silva Neto e Paulo Roberto de Almeida
O neto de Golbery, em quem eu reconheço um grande intelectual, o maior das FFAA e um dos maiores do Brasil, efetuou a seguinte postagem:
Nesses 40 anos de democracia no Brasil, não se pode esquecer desse nome, general Golbery do Couto e Silva. Sem ele, é verdade, não teria ocorrido a Revolução de 1964. Contudo, sem ele, certamente, o Brasil não seria uma democracia hoje. Não sejamos ingratos. A memória é a alma de uma Nação.
Canal Golbery Neto
=============
Repostei, mas comentando, da seguinte forma:
“Minha opinião, que não concorda com a sua: o governo Goulart era certamente o caos, com inflação crescente e quebra de hierarquia. Militares pretensiosos, como Golbery, se empenharam, incitados por governadores ambiciosos, em mais uma intervenção no sistema político, o que fizeram desde a monarquia, criando uma República oligárquica (tanto quanto o Império), da qual se julgavam os juízes e “protetores”. Acharam que poderiam curar o sistema político brasileiro de seus males e imperfeições, ficando um pouco mais para “limpar o terreno”.
Deveriam apenas ter garantido uma continuidade do regime democrático e esperado até as eleições de 1965, mas não gostavam de JK (que sofreu tentativas de golpe).
De fato, limparam o terreno e prepararam o Brasil para um crescimento inédito, com a ajuda da tecnocracia qualificada, mas prolongaram demais o regime de exceção, passando à arrogância do projeto Super Potência, deixando na segunda metade da ditadura apenas endividamento e hiperinflação.
Não foi Golbery quem trouxe a democracia de volta, pois saiu antes de uma transição bem-comportada. Foi o povo e líderes políticos moderados que conduziram o processo a uma solução incompleta, pois as “invenções” políticas criadas pelos militares continuam a dificultar a modernização plena do Brasil, um país de privilégios inaceitáveis e uma representação deformada em sua essência.
Golbery foi o maior intelectual de toda a história militar do Brasil, um dos grandes da história nacional tout court, mas não podia obviamente escapar das tragédias da Guerra Fria, que não era o principal problema do Brasil, que sempre foi o da não educação das grandes massas.
Nem os melhores militares se conscientizaram disso, e o Brasil continuou a ser um país para apenas uma parte da população.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 23/03/2025
Antecipando os efeitos da guerra de agressão de Putin contra a Ucrânia - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Antecipando os efeitos da guerra de agressão de Putin contra a Ucrânia
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Putin e Trump, agindo de forma coordenada ou não, estão obrigando a Europa, compulsoriamente ou de forma voluntária, a se armar novamente. Make Europe Stronger Again, esse vai ser o resultado, mas depois da destruição de metade da Ucrânia, da emigração de milhares de ucranianos e da morte de milhares de seus soldados.
Tudo isso provocado pela ambição de um ditador frustrado — facilitado por um outro dirigente desequilibrado — que deixará como legado uma Rússia mais pobre, sancionada pelas democracias que respeitam o Direito Internacional (entre as quais o Brasil não se inclui), um vácuo superior a um milhão de baixas em suas FFAA e outras centenas de milhares de emigrados forçados, talvez para sempre.
A Rússia de Putin e a Venezuela de Chávez-Maduro (esta, de forma progressiva, aquela mais rapidamente) destruíram seu capital humano e passarão mais de uma geração empenhadas numa difícil reconstrução nacional.
Quais são os beneficiários do atual desmantelamento do sistema multilateral dos últimos 80 anos?
A China, em primeiro lugar, da forma mais oportunista possível, a Europa em segundo lugar, de forma involuntária e malgré soi-même.
E o Brasil? Vai permanecer mais ou menos no mesmo lugar, mantendo, provavelmente, a ilusão do Brics+ como supostamente representativo de um diáfano “Sul Global” (como se China e Rússia pertencessem a essa ficção geopolítica).
A diplomacia profissional brasileira se equilibra dificilmente entre seus padrões habituais de respeito aos valores e princípios de uma doutrina respeitável, construída por grandes estadistas do passado, e a submissão a dirigentes pouco preparados para dirigir um país que não chegou a completar sua modernização integral pela via da educação de qualidade, infelizmente historicamente desleixada por elites mediocres, sem visão de futuro.
Concluo repetindo minha estrofe preferida, de um poema escrito por Mario de Andrade em 1924:
“Progredir, progredimos um tiquinho/
Que o progresso também é uma fatalidade…”
Paulo Roberto Almeida
Brasília, 23 de março de 2025
A inversão do “Fim da História” de Fukuyama, por Benn Steil (Barron’s)
Decades After the ‘End of History,’ Liberal Democracy Is In Retreat
About the author: Benn Steil is director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century
In his influential 1992 best seller, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that “history”—understood in a Hegelian or Marxist sense, to denote the development of human societies over time—had come to an end. Liberal democracy and capitalism represented the terminus of millennia of ideological evolution. Nations such as the U.S. and the member states of the European Union he termed “posthistorical,” having come to rest permanently outside the ideological boundaries of history. They had arrived at the ultimate endpoint of political and economic organization, waiting only to be joined by China, Russia, and others retreating from the historical cul de sacs of authoritarianism.
The strength of Fukuyama’s thesis has been challenged by the subsequent success of those authoritarian states, particularly China’s quasi-market system. But China’s strides away from liberal democracy and laissez-faire economic organization are only half the story. Since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the U.S. has become more like China. This is Fukuyama in reverse.
As popular demands grow for protection against the vicissitudes of foreign forces—migrants flowing in, factories flowing out—patience with invisible hands, Madisonian checks and balances, and the grinding machinery of liberal democracy plummets. Autocracy creeps in.
The spread of “end of history” thinking among the U.S. elite in the 1990s and early 2000s was striking. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush championed the view that economic integration would promote political freedom. They espoused the conviction that the internet and the attractions of free trade were irresistible forces pushing the remaining benighted “historical” nations toward liberal democracy and free markets. Future President Joe Biden welcomed China’s 2001 WTO accession “because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules.”
None of this proved to be true. Since China joined the WTO, its economy has grown 1,400%. Since 2010, it has been the world’s largest exporter. It has also become a systematic violator of basic rules and principles of the WTO, which was created specifically to integrate market economies. China practices state-supported intellectual property theft. It forces foreign companies operating in its markets to transfer technology to local enterprises. It engages in widespread commercial espionage. It provides state-owned and favored domestic firms with massive subsidies, enabling and encouraging them to undercut competitors abroad and dominate foreign markets. All the while it has, certainly since the ascension of President Xi Jinping in 2012, become progressively less liberal politically, using the internet and advanced technology to expand state surveillance and control of private behavior.
The end of history, it seems, is marked not by an ever-widening embrace of liberal democracy and free markets, but by the progressive centralization of national political power in a “unitary executive”—including greater power, vested in one man, to restrict trade with, and investment by, foreign entities.
That change isn’t limited to China.
Since the 2001 al Qaeda terrorist attacks, the U.S. executive branch has arrogated vast powers from the other branches in the areas of mass electronic surveillance and the use of military force. Trade, tariff, and investment policy is now set, sometimes hour by hour, through executive order. State subsidies, while still well below Chinese levels, have been showered on favored industries. Firms are compelled to share sensitive data and communications access, and to cut off financing links with targeted entities. Federal law enforcement, most notably at the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been openly politicized. Even U.S. election law seems now to be on soft ground, with President Donald Trump issuing mass pardons to the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters and suggesting he might fight for a constitutionally forbidden third term.
Whereas it would be wrong to blame the rise of Chinese economic power for trends that are discernible earlier, and for very different reasons, compelling link the so-called China shock—marked by the devastation of many U.S. communities from the loss of manufacturing jobs—to the rise of political polarization and popular demands for rapid and robust presidential action. Supranational limitations on presidential power, particularly the WTO dispute settlement appellate body, have been swatted away by three consecutive administrations—Republican and Democrat.
The full title of Fukuyama’s blockbuster was, of course, The End of History and the Last Man. “The last man” refers to Nietzsche’s profile of the docile, risk-averse individual who comes to dominate the landscape in “posthistorical” free-market liberal democracies. After the triumph of markets and democracy, the seemingly eternal human desire for struggle and heroism dies away, replaced by the flabby longing for comfort and ease. So, too, in the unitary-executive version of history’s end, we arrive at “the last tariff”—that final, fatal retaliatory tariff, heaped upon earlier mounds of retaliatory tariffs, that so destroys any reason for trade that it makes all further tariffs redundant, sweeping away Davos man and his dream of globalization.
Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barron’s newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit feedback and commentary pitches to ideas@barrons.com.
Book review: Efeito Xi Jinping por Ashley Esarey e Rongbin Han (eds.), review by Olivia Cheung (H-Net Reviews)
Cheung on Esarey and Han, 'The Xi Jinping Effect' [Review]
Esarey, Ashley; Han, Rongbin, eds.. The Xi Jinping Effect
University of Washington Press, 2024. 304 pp. $32.00 (paper), ISBN 9780295752815.
Reviewed by Olivia Cheung (King's College London)
Published on H-Diplo (March, 2025)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)
Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=61434
Xi Jinping is known for his authoritarian rule, foreign policy ambitions, and confrontational stance toward the United States. Shortly after taking power in late 2012, Xi articulated the goal of achieving “the China Dream of national rejuvenation” by mid-century.[1] To reach this, he has focused on reinvigorating the Chinese Communist Party on the basis of centralizing powers in his hands. He has disregarded conventions, launching an unprecedentedly intense rectification-cum-anticorruption drive; elevating his “thought” as the state ideology; restructuring the party, military, and state; abolishing term limits in 2018; taking a third term in 2022; and ending the “hide and bide” foreign policy. Politically, Xi appears invisible, but does his power translate to effective governance? Even under former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s totalitarian rule, resistance and subversion persisted. As a Chinese saying goes, “From the top comes policies; from the bottom, coping strategies.” To govern as effectively as he holds power, Xi must overcome not only resistance and inertia, but also deep-seated structural factors and international forces beyond his control.
To what extent does Xi impact China’s governance and policies? The Xi Jinping Effect, edited by Ashley Esarey and Rongbin Han, examines this question. The book is divided into four parts, with the first three addressing the Xi effect on domestic affairs—internal party governance and ideological rectification (part 1), socioeconomic inequality (part 2), and mass surveillance and control (part 3). Part 4 considers Xi’s impact on Taiwan and China’s relations with Southeast Asia. While these areas are significant, it is unclear why they were chosen over others. Notably, Xi has invested in technological supremacy, party control in business, securitization, military-civilian fusion, rebooting “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong, befriending the Global South, competing with the United States, and changing the global governance system in a more Sino-centric fashion. Would focusing on these areas yield a different assessment of the Xi effect?
If I were to study the Xi effect, I would use X’s strategic intentions as the starting point and anchor. Based on an analysis of Xi’s speeches and writings, I would identify the areas he is most and least determined to change, his benchmarks of success, time frame, and the trade-offs he is willing to make.[2] Thereafter, I would sort Xi’s policies into categories depending on the strength or outcome of the Xi effect as Xi intended them to be. I would then select several cases from each category for analysis with a view of producing findings that will have a good degree of generalizability. Putting Xi’s preferences and worldview, or Xi Jinping Thought, front and center implies taking Xi’s agency fully into account in appraising the Xi effect. Assessing the Xi effect by checking whether Xi Thought was faithfully implemented should allow us to probe more deeply into the nature and limits of Xi’s strongman rule, this being the very phenomenon that motivates a study of the Xi effect in the first place.
The book concludes that the Xi effect is highly uneven. It is found to be the main reason behind the “total surveillance” of society (chapter 6), especially the Xinjiang Uyghurs (chapter 7). It has shown to be robust in anticorruption in the party-state (chapter 1). Its impact on ideological governance in the party (chapter 2) and society (chapter 3) is sweeping. Furthermore, it has risen above all factors in shaping China’s Taiwan policy (chapter 8). In these areas, Xi has overturned long-standing post-Mao policies. It is nothing short of a “counter-reformation” (chapter 2) of the post-Mao or Dengist reform, one that will most likely endure as long as Xi is in power. The authors of these chapters, except chapters 7 (on Xinjiang) and 8 (on Taiwan), observe that the changes ushered in by Xi are not entirely new. They either built on or adapt existing trends or took a page from earlier periods. Deng Kai, David Demes, and Chih-Jou Jay Chen (chapter 7) point out that Xi’s “total surveillance” system was made possible by the preceding Hu Jintao regime’s decision to build a national population database (p. 154). Andrew Wedeman traces the origin of Xi’s anticorruption campaign to Mao’s times (chapter 1). Timothy Cheek observes ideological governance under Xi had roots in the Qing dynasty (chapter 2). Gerda Wielander demonstrates that Xi’s reaffirmation of “faith” in the party, though overtly political, strikes a chord with popular thinking at the social grassroots (chapter 3). Prior to Xi, many human right dissidents in China publicly proclaimed the importance of keeping faith. Like Xi, they also saw faith as a “spiritual and motivational force” to help them move forward (p. 73). Whereas they claimed inspiration from Christianity (pp. 73-74) to confront the authorities, Xi, an atheist, urged people to submit to the party out of faith in its moral righteousness.
In contrast to the above chapters, Martin King Whyte (chapter 4) and Alexia T. Chan (chapter 5) conclude that the Xi effect is slight, if not negligible, in improving socioeconomic inequality. Both present ample evidence of persistent and increasing urban-rural inequality under Xi. Their findings juxtapose to Xi’s declaration, in 2020, that the antipoverty campaign he started in 2015 had delivered a “miracle.” Xi claimed that the campaign had lifted seventy million rural Chinese out of “absolute poverty.”[3] Yet, the everyday poverty documented in chapters 4 and 5 shows that the success of the antipoverty campaign was short-lived. Whyte attributes the lack of a Xi effect in reducing inequality not to Xi’s weakness but his reluctance to take “bold” steps to combat inequality (p. 117). Chan goes further. She finds that the persistence of second-class citizenship under Xi is intentional and “serves state goals” (p. 146). Both further observe that structural factors have come into play. For example, Chan finds that the problem of “unfunded mandates” has persisted under Xi (p. 139), whereby the central government announced goals to improve the people’s livelihood without supporting cash-strapped local governments to translate these goals into actual policies. I would add that the massive increase in local government debt under Xi is another important structural factor, this being one that is inadvertently contributed by his other policies, notably the crackdown on the property sector and shadow banking.[4]
The middle point between a strong Xi effect and a weak Xi effect is found in China’s relations with Southeast Asia. Brantly Womack (chapter 9) shows that the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s signature foreign policy program, has strengthened connectivity between China and Southeast Asia, and with that, their asymmetric power balance to the advantage of China (p. 229). Yet Womack stresses that Southeast Asia is not only “concerned” about Xi’s arrogance but also “the possible side effects of China’s confrontation with the United States”—a prominent feature of Xi’s foreign policy (p. 229). Womack concluded that Southeast Asia’s reluctance to take a side between the United States and China is a more decisive factor than Xi’s personality, diplomacy, or aggressive actions in shaping their approach to China.
Every chapter in this book is highly informative on the latest developments of China under Xi. However, not all of them addresses the Xi effect explicitly or systematically. In some chapters, there is a lack of a focused examination of the Xi effect. Policy changes under Xi are taken as evidence of a Xi effect at work, almost at face value. Other chapters, notably chapter 9, make efforts to isolate Xi’s agency from other factors contributing to the policy outcome observed under Xi. The lack of a shared theoretical framework to examine the Xi effect is not particularly conducive to understanding the Xi effect. This brings me back to my earlier suggestion of using Xi Thought as a yardstick to appraise the Xi effect, one that is, from what I can see, feasible to be adopted by all chapters.
As discussed earlier, the book concludes that the Xi effect is highly uneven across policy issues. It would have been helpful if the book had also addressed the implications of this observation more deeply, beyond pointing out the tension between agency and structure. At a start, perhaps the following questions could be addressed. Has Xi’s success in implementing a system of total surveillance in society, which greatly raises the cost of the public expression of dissatisfaction, inadvertently reduced his commitment to take bold steps to improve the quality of living for China’s workers? Has the persistence of income inequality in China weakened Xi’s ideological governance? What are the common variables behind the strong Xi effect in anticorruption, ideological governance, social control, and China’s Taiwan policy?
Finally, it would have been invaluable had the authors reflected on whether the conclusions drawn in their studies can be extrapolated and why. In the book where this is done, it is often insightful. For example, in chapter 3, Wielander links Xi’s ideological governance—namely his strategy to “tighten control of all faith-based activity and to position the Party itself as an object of faith”—to China’s emergence as a “fundamentalist power” that challenges the “international order built on commonly shared values” (p. 71). This is a fascinating insight that speaks of the role of domestic factors in how China sees its place in the world. It contributes a more textured understanding to the role of domestic factors in Chinese foreign policy, a welcome variation to the dominant accounts, which focus heavily on international structural factors. This is only one of many examples of the usefulness of this volume in unraveling the complexities of Xi’s China.
As Xi is nearing the middle of his third five-year term, we are increasingly witnessing a distinct Xi effect on China’s relations with the rest of the world. Xi’s personal rapport with Putin, head-of-state diplomacy with world leaders, and the three global initiatives he introduced as a better alternative to the liberal international order are some examples.[5] To bring the analysis of the Xi effect up to date, it would be helpful to examine closely Xi’s tianxia worldview and his role in foreign policymaking. This could be one of the directions which the research program of the Xi effect may develop.
Notes
[1]. Jinping Xi, Xi Jinping tan zhiguo lizheng [Xi Jinping: The Governance of China] (Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe, 2014), 35-36.
[2]. Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2024).
[3]. Ibid., 102, 112-13.
[4]. Victor Shih and Jonathan Elkobi, Local Government Debt Dynamics in China: An Exploration Through the Lens of Local Government Debt and LGFV Debt, November 27, 2023, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/2023-report_shih_local-government-debt-dynamics-in-china.pdf.
[5]. These are the Global Development Initiative (2021), Global Security Initiative (2022), and Global Civilization Initiative (2023).
Olivia Cheung is a lecturer in politics at the Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London. Her research specialization is the domestic politics and foreign policy of China. Her latest major publications are The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2024), coauthored with Steve Tsang, and Factional-Ideological Conflicts in Chinese Politics: To the Left or to the Right?(Amsterdam University Press, 2023).
Citation: Olivia Cheung. Review of Esarey, Ashley; Han, Rongbin, eds.. The Xi Jinping Effect. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. March, 2025.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=61434
sábado, 22 de março de 2025
Os Serviços Secretos do Itamaraty - Claudio Dantas Sequeira (Correio Braziliense, 2007)
Os Serviços Secretos do Itamaraty
Claudio Dantas Sequeira
Correio Braziliense, 2007
Uma das fontes para a redação de meu ensaio sobre o Itamaraty sob o AI-5, foi a série de artigos do jornalista Cláudio Dantas sobre os "serviços secretos" criados pelo embaixador Manoel Pio Correa para intimidar os diplomatas mais à esquerda, digamos assim. Meu ensaio está disponível como segue:
1847. “Do alinhamento recalcitrante à colaboração relutante: o Itamaraty em tempos de AI-5”, Brasília, 31 dezembro 2007, 32 p. Ensaio histórico sobre os efeitos institucionais e o impacto do AI-5 na política externa. Publicado em Oswaldo Munteal Filho, Adriano de Freixo e Jacqueline Ventapane Freitas (orgs.), "Tempo Negro, temperatura sufocante": Estado e Sociedade no Brasil do AI-5 (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC-Rio, Contraponto, 2008; 396 p. ISBN 978-85-7866-002-4; p. 65-89). Disponível em Academia.edu (link: https://www.academia.edu/44479134/Do_alinhamento_recalcitrante_a_colaboracao_relutante_o_Itamaraty_em_tempos_de_AI_5_2008_)
O artigo de Claudio Dantas, por sua vez, está disponível como segue:
Os Serviços Secretos do Itamaraty
Claudio Dantas Sequeira, Correio Brasiliense (2007)
Os Serviços Secretos do Itamaraty – Claudio Dantas Sequeira, Correio Brasiliense (2007) Série de artigos de Claudio Dantas Sequeira, então jornalista do Correio Braziliense, publicados nos dias 22 a 26 de julho de 2007, reportagem “sobre os serviços secretos do Itamaraty”, depois contemplada com o Prêmio Esso de Jornalismo, pelo conjunto das matérias, com base nos arquivos do CIEX, o Centro de Informações do Exterior, do Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Série publicada por Paulo Roberto de Almeida no blog Diplomatizzando Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas. Tristes tempos aqueles, nos quais diplomatas era levados a colaborar com um regime de exceção.
A mesma matéria foi ivulgada em meu blog:
quarta-feira, 25 de julho de 2007
757) O Itamaraty colaborando com a ditadura... https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2007/07/757-o-itamaraty-colaborando-com.html
Os sedentos e os abastecidos em água - Virtual Capitalist
Os sedentos e os abastecidos em água
Virtual Capitalist
O mundo tem quase 43 trilhões de m3 de água divididos entre seus quase 200 países. O Brasil vem em primeiro lugar, com mais de 13% desses recursos preciosos, concentrado nos aquíferos, sobretrudo na Amazônia, presumivelmente.Depois vem a Rússia, com 10% do recursos hídricosmm um imenso território com pouca gente, mas grande desperdício. Em seguida é o Canadá, com 6,7%, território muito vasto, para número ainda mais reduzido de gente. Imediatamente após, vem o vizinho imperialista, com 6,6% dos recursos, e muita gente.
Em muito pior situação está a Índia, o país mais habitado do planeta, gente demais para pouca água, só 3,4% dos recursos globais, bem atrás do segundo país mais habitado, mas que dispõe de 6,6%, igual aos EUA.
Depois dos EUA e antes da Índia ainda tem Colômbia, Indonésia e Peru.
https://www.voronoiapp.com/natural-resources/Countries-With-the-Most-Freshwater-Resources--4359
OS DOZE MAIORES FILMES BRASILEIROS DE TODOS OS TEMPOS - Arnaldo Barbosa Brandão (ABB)
OS DOZE MAIORES FILMES BRASILEIROS DE TODOS OS TEMPOS
Do a.b.b.
Sei que muita gente evita os filmes brasileiros, mas nós já fomos bons nesta arte, que sem dúvida é a “arte” do século, a tv tá mostrando isso.
1.NO PAIZ DAS AMAZONAS. Filme de 1921 feito por um tal Silvino Santos(nada a ver com Silvio Santos). Lançado pela primeira vez no Cine Pathé em Paris. Depois no Rio de Janeiro em 1923. Sucesso estrondoso. Tenho visto trechos dos filmes do Silvino a partir do documentário de um cineasta chamado Aurelio Michiles. O documentário é de 1997 e costuma passar no Canal 53. A história do Silvino Santos é destas que só acontecem no Brasil. Um cara faz um filme sobre a Amazônia no início do século XX, filmando em áreas remotas da Região, financiado por um Comendador da Borracha, e ninguém fica sabendo, até que aparece o Aurelio Michiles e conta tudo através de um documentário. Pra se ter ideia da coisa, o tal Silvino Santos era um cara pobre que foi trabalhar em Belém, aproveitando ainda o período áureo da borracha, então ele casa. Vocês sabem como é. O cara só tem três chances de ficar rico na vida: quando nasce, quando casa, ou ganhando no jogo do bicho.
2. LIMITE. Do Mário Peixoto. Tem gente que pensa que o Brasil sempre foi esta pasmaceira que vivemos agora, com um bando de ignorantes mandando no País. Antes do cinema novo, antes do neorrealismo italiano, antes de Orson Welles, antes de tudo, mas depois do expressionismo alemão, nós estávamos lá na frente. Muitos pensam que foi Hollywood quem inventou o cinema nos termos que se conhece hoje. Não foi. Foram os alemães que, tirante os gregos, inventaram quase tudo (comecem pelos filósofos, depois os físicos, depois a música). Depois dos alemães somos nós com “LIMITE”, depois sim é que apareceu Hollywood, quando os alemães (Fritz Lang, entre outros) fugiram do Hitler e criaram o grande cinema americano(muita gente vai gostar de saber disso, pena que não foi bem assim). Os gringos ofereciam tudo (casa, carros e salários) para que os caras ficassem, assim como fizeram durante e depois da 2ª Guerra. Queriam os talentos, enquanto nós que tínhamos o talento e a demanda, não conseguimos criar uma empresa (organização) para desenvolver o cinema. Houve tentativas como a Atlântida, mas não foram pra frente. Por quê? Boa pergunta. Pois bem, vamos a um dos grandes talentos. O cara morava no Rio, era muito rico e decide fazer um filme para mostrar que o tempo é uma coisa ilusória. Será? Era jovem, culto, rico, e terrivelmente talentoso. Então pôs as mãos-a-obra. O filme é de 1930 quando o Brasil vivia uma de suas costumeiras revoluções que nunca dão em nada, mas ele não falou em política, vivia num mundo a parte, muito mais interessante, o mundo da arte. Quem vê-lo verá o expressionismo alemão nos seus grandes momentos, verá Antonioni no original, antes dele ter feito àqueles lindos filmes com a Monica Vitti.O cara (Mário Peixoto) é uma lenda como Glauber, mas muito diferente do Glauber, era introspectivo, quieto, delicado. Juntou alguns atores amadores, tinha grana pra bancar, então resolveu fazer uma obra de arte sem interferência de ninguém. O filme foi mostrado para ninguém menos que o Eisenstein em Londres, e ele adorou, embora eu não goste muito do Eisenstein.
3. O CHEIRO DO RALO. Selton Melo se apaixona por uma bunda, não preciso dizer mais nada. Filme interessante sobre um objeto interessante. Não devemos nos esquecer que Drummond tem um poema muito bom sobre ela (a bunda).
4. DEUS E O DIABO NA TERRA DO SOL. 1964 ou 65, não sei, só sei que foi durante o regime militar, nosso período mais produtivo nas artes, talvez porque tivéssemos um inimigo. Glauber Rocha exagerava. Então fez logo três filmes que colocaram o cinema brasileiro entre os maiores do mundo. Pois é, já tivemos um dos melhores cinemas do mundo, quem diria. Os outros dois são BARRAVENTO e TERRA EM TRANSE. Para completar o estrago fez ainda o documentário “MARANHÃO 66” encomendado pelo Sarney(onde ele sacaneia o Sarney, foi o único que conseguiu), depois fez o “Di”, documentário sobre o enterro do pintor (proibido pela família). Imagine o que Glauber andou fazendo depois com a câmera na mão e muita merda na cabeça. Nem vou falar dos livros do Glauber, uma porralouquice total.
5. VIDAS SECAS. Nelson Pereira dos Santos faz seu grande filme em que a atriz principal era a cachorra Baleia. Prefiro “Cinco Vezes Favela”. Agora o grande Nelson está no céu, devia fazer um filme sobre aquilo lá, não, melhor deixar para o Glauber.
6. OS CANGACEIROS. Lima Barreto(cineasta) faz um faroeste brasileiro. Aparecem até uns desfiladeiros no meio da Caatinga.
7. O TEMPO E O VENTO 1985. Série de televisão dirigida pelo Paulo José em 1985 com base na saga do Érico Veríssimo, um dos maiores escritores brasileiros. Música do Tom Jobim, mas há também outras canções gauchescas, só faltou Teixeirinha. Uma das melhores coisas feita pela TV brasileira. Pra quem vive metendo o pau na TV Globo por razões ideológicas, esquecendo-se de ela produziu belas coisas. Tarcisio Meira fez seu grande papel como um capitão Rodrigo inesquecível.
8. SÃO BERNARDO. 1971. Leon Hirzman faz um dos dez maiores filmes brasileiros com base na grande obra de Graciliano Ramos. Tem gente que prefere “Vidas Secas”, mas eu prefiro São Bernardo, nada apelativo e mais profundo e sem maiores influências do neorrealismo, captando o espírito do livro. Grande livro.
9. ESTÔMAGO. Filme interessante que mostra o poder da comida e de quem sabe fazê-la. Muito humor, muita influência do neorrealismo italiano. Muito tudo.
10. O PAGADOR DE PROMESSAS. Anselmo Duarte ganha a Palma de ouro em Cannes com filme baseado na obra do grande teatrólogo Dias Gomes, hoje esquecido.
11. O FORNO. Humberto Mauro. Documentário do grande mestre de Cataguazes. Não sei se vão achar. Vi no cinema, quando eles ainda existiam, só em Copacabana havia uns dez. Na Tijuca havia uns seis. No Centro nem se fala.
12. BUROCRACIA. 1968. Filme do Miguelzinho Freire com o a.b.b. como ator principal e roteirista. A história do cara que passa meses tirando atestados pra se internar e fazer uma cirurgia, mas morre antes. Filme bem atual. Passa todos os dias nos hospitais de Brasília.
OBS. Agora tem esse ai que ganhou o OSCAR com a Fernanda Torres que ainda não pude ver (não aguento ficar sentado tanto tempo, tenho que me mexer) depois de ver todos os filmes do mundo que passavam nos cinemas da Cinelândia (franceses, italianos, ingleses ,poloneses, russos, tchecos, etc.)
Postagem em destaque
Quando comecei a seguir metodicamente as eleições presidenciais? Em 2006, mas já o fazia antes... - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Por acaso, apareceu das "catacumbas" um texto escrito em 2006 sobre as campanhas eleitorais no Brasil e as eleições presidenciais...
-
Carreira Diplomática: respondendo a um questionário Paulo Roberto de Almeida ( www.pralmeida.org ) Respostas a questões colocadas por gradua...
-
Minha entrevista desta sexta-feira 25/02/2022, sobre a dramática situação da Ucrânia no canal +BrasilNews. 1437. “ Entrevista sobre a Ucrân...
-
Uma preparação de longo curso e uma vida nômade Paulo Roberto de Almeida A carreira diplomática tem atraído número crescente de jovens, em ...
-
FAQ do Candidato a Diplomata por Renato Domith Godinho TEMAS: Concurso do Instituto Rio Branco, Itamaraty, Carreira Diplomática, MRE, Diplom...
-
Israel Products in India: Check the Complete list of Israeli Brands! Several Israeli companies have established themselves in the Indian m...
-
Testei as 7 ferramentas de IA GRATUITAS do Google (que superam todas as alternativas pagas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4SYmD6RnM
-
Bibliografia para o concurso do Rio Branco Resumo de uma lista de leituras por: Paulo Roberto de Almeida (Brasília, fevereiro de 2010) ...
-
Stephen Kotkin is a legendary historian, currently at Hoover, previously at Princeton. Best known for his Stalin biographies, his other wor...
-
Por puro acaso, recebendo hoje mais um "enésimo" comentário a este post meu: QUINTA-FEIRA, 21 DE MAIO DE 2009 1112) Carr...
-
Para quem acha que Marx foi o genial inventor da teoria da mais-valia, valeria a pena ler os trabalhos do economista britanico Thomas Hodgsk...
