8 - From the European Restoration to the First World War, 1815–1914

Summary

Since 1966, the right of self-determination of peoples is codified as a human right and thus as a right all humans (and thereby all the more all peoples) have everywhere and at all times. From a normative perspective, no regional differences exist.

This was not always the case, not only in a normative but also and all the more so in an empirical respect. In 1826 a demand for equal rights for all African peoples, as had been demanded for the settler societies of European descent in the Americas, would have encountered almost universal incomprehension. The American states after all had already experienced a cycle of “civilizing” European colonial rule, but Africa still awaited this “blessing” – and the widespread conviction was that without it, self-determination, let alone the formation of a sovereign state, was not possible.

Africa initially was not taken into consideration and instead of becoming a subject of self-determination became in practice an object of alien determination; the most conspicuous differences were between Europe and the Americas. At first these differences became even greater. What in the late eighteenth century on both continents had begun with the achievement of popular sovereignty led in the Americas to virtually complete decolonization, while in Europe already essentially in 1798, at the latest, but by 1815 in practice the prerevolutionary situation had been reestablished. This became evident in particular in the failed career of the plebiscite in territorial questions of international law.

Europe thereby ended up in a backward position vis-à-vis the Americas in the development of the right of self-determination. In the Americas three limiting criteria were introduced between 1776 and 1865: decolonization, uti possidetis, and the prohibition of secession, although “self-determination” and the “right of self-determination” were not yet referred to as such. Something approaching a right to self-determination existed only if the following conditions were met: the territory in question was a colony separated from the motherland by a sea, an ocean if at all possible, or a large landmass; the existing international borders were retained and new ones created solely using already existing administrative borders; and if finally, with the exception of decolonization, a strict prohibition on the separation of parts of states from larger state formations existed.