Tag: Wilsonian Moment

Autonomy over Independence, or the Wilsonian Moment in western Europe

On By MoH TeamIn Conferences and PublicationsLeave a comment

A new publication and a new conference presentation by the MoH Team

Many people know the Spanish north-western city of Girona for one of three things: it has offered some of its breathtaking corners to the famous TV series Game of Thrones; it is home to former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont (who has been living in Belgium since the 2017 attempt of his government to convert Catalonia into an independent country); and, in the late 2000s, Ryanair turned its airport into the main gateway to the Costa Brava.

On 2-3 November 2023, the city also became the venue of an international conference on the topic of Global Wilsonism and its Impact on Europe and America. The event gathered about 15 researchers working on different aspects of the so-called Wilsonian Moment, that is a moment between the end of 1918 and the first half of 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson briefly turned into a symbol of peace, justice and self-determination around the world.

In this context, Emmanuel presented a paper written with Mona and entitled Autonomy over Independence: Self-Determination in Catalonia, Flanders, and South Tyrol in the Aftermath of the Great War. The paper argues that, while the impact of the postwar spread of self-determination on the redrawing of eastern European borders and on the claims of colonial independence movements has been extensively researched, the international historiography has paid little attention to minority nationalist movements in western Europe. The text thus focuses on three regions (Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol) that experienced considerable sub-state national mobilisation in the interwar period and aims to understand whether the leaders of western European minorities and stateless nations shared the same enthusiasm as their anti-colonial and eastern European counterparts for the new international order that self-determination seemed to foreshadow in the months following the end of the First World War.

The article concludes that nationalist forces in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol initially mobilised self-determination and referred to Wilson as a symbol of national liberation, but this instrumentalisation of self-determination was not sustained. Large-scale mobilisation occurred only in Catalonia, and, even there, it disappeared suddenly in spring 1919. Furthermore, sub-state nationalist movements in western Europe tended to mobilise self-determination to gain regional autonomy, rather than full independence. The willingness of these movements to privilege autonomy over full independence made them more receptive to compromise. Radical forces would become stronger only in the 1930s and largely for reasons not directly connected to the post-war mobilization around self-determination.

The presentation shortly followed the publication of the paper in issue 53(4) of European History Quarterly in October 2023. The paper is available in open access at the journal’s website: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02656914231198182

The Wilsonian Moment in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol

On By MoH TeamIn Conferences and PublicationsLeave a comment

Or how sub-state national mobilisation occurred, but it was more fleeting than minority nationalist leaders would have hoped for

On the 100th anniversary of the Paris Peace Conference, in 2019, Emmanuel and Mona presented a paper at the 29th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) examining whether there was a ‘Wilsonian Moment in Western Europe’. A revised version of that paper has now been accepted for publication in European History Quarterly and it is due to appear online and in print in 2023. The paper entitled ‘Autonomy over Independence: Self-Determination in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol in the Aftermath of the Great War’ (and available in pre-print here) fills an important gap in the historiography of self-determination in the immediate post-WWI period.

While the impact of the post-war spread of self-determination on the re­­drawing of Eastern European borders and on the claims of colonial independence movements has been extensively researched, the international historiography has paid little attention to minority nationalist movements in Western Europe. Focusing on three regions (Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol) that experienced considerable substate national mobilisation between the world wars, Emmanuel and Mona inquire into whether the leaders of Western European minorities and stateless nations shared the same enthusiasm as their anti-colonial and Eastern European counterparts for the new international order that self-determination seemed to foreshadow in the months following the end of the Great War. Since President Woodrow Wilson stood out as the most prominent purveyor of the new international legitimacy of self-determination, the article further examines how Western European nationalist movements exploited Wilson’s image and advocacy to achieve their own goals.

Emmanuel and Mona conclude that nationalist forces in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol initially mobilised self-determination and referred to Wilson as a symbol of national liberation, but this instrumentalisation of self-determination was not sustained. Large-scale mobilisation occurred only in Catalonia and, even there, it disappeared almost overnight in spring 1919. Furthermore, substate nationalist movements in Western Europe tended to mobilise self-determination to gain regional autonomy, rather than full independence, thus pursuing internal, not external, self-determination. The willingness of these movements to privilege autonomy over full independence made them more receptive to compromise solutions and radical forces became stronger only in the 1930s, largely for reasons not directly connected to the post-war mobilisation around self-determination.

In other words, the wave of unprecedented international legitimacy for national self-determination claims inaugurated at the end of WWI did extend to Western Europe. It was not a uniform phenomenon, but a mix of different local attempts to mobilise the new language of self-determination that however did not last as long, and were not as powerful, as the leaders of Western European minority nationalist movements would have wished.