Abstract
In the age of European imperial expansion that opened at the close of the 15th century and lasted for more than four centuries, three of the smallest countries emerged with some of the largest colonial domains.1 Portugal and the Netherlands pioneered the construction of far-flung sea-borne mercantile empires in the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 20th century the original maritime imperial expansion had evolved into large African territorial conquests and scattered Asian enclaves for Portugal, and for the Netherlands the vast archipelago colony that became Indonesia, sprawling 3,600 miles from east to west, as well as much smaller Caribbean holdings. Belgium, through the extraordinary skill of King Leopold II in the predatory diplomacy of African partition, acquired by inheritance from its monarch a large part of central Africa. All three countries came to attach great value to their imperial domains, and entered the era of decolonization determined to retain them into an indefinite future.
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Notes
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in W. M. Louis, ed., Resurgent Adventures in Britannia, London, I.B. Tauris, 2011.
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M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, c. 1300 to the Present, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1981, p. 119.
P. Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 1995, p. 24.
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R. J. McMahon, Colonialism and the Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesia, 1945–49, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1981, p. 40.
On American policy during Indonesian decolonization, see P. Gouda, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism, 1920–1949, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2002.
In unraveling this tormented and protracted decolonization from 1945 to 1950, I found especially helpful T. Friend, Indonesian Destinies, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2003, and Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia.
A. Lijphart, The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch and West New Guinea, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1966, p. 285.
A. Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, 2d ed., Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1975. A limit to consociationalism in decolonization was its frequent tendency to overcome contentious issues by postponing decisions.
See R. B. Andeweg and G. A. Irwin, Governance and Politics of the Netherlands, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 30.
See also H. Daalder and G. A. Irwin, Politics in the Netherlands: How Much Change?, London, Frank Cass, 1998.
C. Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 84.
A. Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1998, p. 277.
C. Young, Politics in the Congo, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 10–32.
E. Witte, J. Craeybeckx and A. Meynen, Political History of Belgium from 1830 Onwards, Antwerp, VUB, 2000, pp. 135–163.
P. de Vos, La decolonization: Les événements du Congo de 1959 à 1967, Brussels, ABC, 1975, p. 24. This volume contains a summary of the debates among a number of key participants in decolonization on Belgian radio.
P. Lumumba, Le Congo, terre d’avenir, est-il menacé, Brussels, Office de Publicité, 1961.
Cited in J. Stengers, ‘Precipitous decolonization: The case of the Belgian Congo’, in P. Gifford and W. R. Louis, eds, The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization, 1940–1960, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1982, p. 314.
B. Verhaegen, L’ABAKO et l’indépendance du Congo: Dix ans du nationalisme kongo, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003, p. 161.
A report whispered at the time, but confirmed decades later by a participant, J.-M. Bomboko, ‘Vers l’indépendance: Perceptions congolaises’, in C. Braekman, ed., Congo 1960: Échec d’une decolonization, Brussels, GRIP, 2010, p. 81.
T. Kanza, Conflict in the Congo, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972, p. 32.
In the words of a recent study of Belgian politics, the contemporary narrative of Belgium is ‘one of a country that does not believe in itself’, plagued by distrust among the elite. K. Deschouwer, The Politics of Belgium: Governing a Divided Society, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 242.
For a moving account by a scholar with decades of intimate contact with various segments of the Belgian elite, see R. Fox, In the Belgian Chateau: The Spirit and Culture of a Society in the Age of Change, Chicago, IL, Ivan R. Dee, 1994. She concludes that the reality of Belgium as a nation and societal community was disappearing into the past, its breakup a topic of serious discussion (p. 311). Guy Vanthemsche in an exhaustive inquiry into the impact of the colony on Belgium concludes that for a half-century a cult of the Congo had been at the core of Belgian nationalism: ‘the loss of the Congo reduced the possibilities for the Walloons and Flemish to imagine a Belgian nation and must be considered among the factors leading to decentralization and regionalism in Belgium after 1960’, in La Belgique et le Congo: L’impact de la colonie sur la métropole, Brussels, Editions le Cri, 2010, p. 89.
J. Duffy, Portuguese Africa, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1959, p. 75.
See especially the thorough account by J. C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
V. Alexandre, ‘The colonial empire’, in A. C. Pinto, ed., Modern Portugal, Palo Alto, CA, Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1998, pp. 41–59.
G. Clarence-Smith, The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975: A Study of Economic Imperialism, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1975;
J. B. Forest, Lineages of State Tragility: Rural Civil Society in Guinea-Bissau, Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2003.
B. Davidson, ‘Portuguese-speaking Africa’, in M. Crowder, ed., Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 8, c. 1940–1975, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 760.
Among many sources, let me note: P. Chabal, A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2002;
A. Isaacman and B. Isaacman, Mozambique: Prom Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982, Boulder, CO, Westview, 1983;
R. Pelissier, La colonie du mintaure: Nationalismes et révolte en Angola (1928–1961), Montaments, Pelissier, 1978.
Useful sources on contemporary Portugal include Pinto, Modern Portugal; K. Maxwell and M. H. Haltzel, eds„ Portugal: Ancient Country, Young Democracy, Washington, DC, Wilson Center, 1990;
L. S. Graham and D. L. Wheeler, In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
Penders, West New Guinea Debacle, p. 271; D. Higgs, ed., Portuguese Overseas Migration in Global Perspective, Toronto, Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1990, pp. 1–3.
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Young, C. (2015). Imperial Endings and Small States: Disorderly Decolonization for the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal. In: Jerónimo, M.B., Pinto, A.C. (eds) The Ends of European Colonial Empires. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394064_5
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