Decolonizations, Colonizations, and More Decolonizations: The End of Empire in Time and Space

Abstract

In the 1950s and 1960s, colonial empires turned into what seemed to be a world of nation-states. But the first wave of decolonization came in the Americas between the 1780s and the 1820s. This article explores the relationship between these two waves and the wave of colonizations that occurred in between. Rather than assimilating the two episodes of decolonization to a single narrative, I argue that both entailed profound struggles in which national sovereignty was only one possible outcome and that in between empires were reinvigorated, transformed, and reinvented. The second wave of decolonization entailed what the first did not: undermining the very idea of empire. Both waves left unanswered a question that had concerned activists in their times: could political liberation be turned into economic and social justice? This article points to the uses and limits of the concept of decolonization in understanding struggles for global equality.