The Partitions of Europe, Palestine, and India after World War II

Seminar description

Partitions of states have been a significant feature of the global system for centuries but have not stimulated as extensive and intensive a scholarly literature as that devoted to ethnic and national conflict. In this seminar, we consider the various modalities of partition—e.g., of continents, empires, nations and regions by rival states (external) and decolonizing states (internal)—by studying the cases of Europe (mainly Germany), India and Palestine, which occurred relatively simultaneously in the second half of the 1940s. How did the reconfigured global system address one of the conundrums that the League of Nations confronted in the interwar period: whether national borders should always coincide with national/ethnic identities, and the status of minority populations? Far from ‘solving’ these problems, it could be argued, these partitions resulted in civil wars, forced population movements and unstable polities. Alternatively, the conflict could have been worse, argued British imperial elites; partition averted even greater disaster. In fact, some realist political scientists contend, partition secured long-term peace, at least in Europe. We will discuss these and other issues by asking after the reasons and consequences of these partitions. We will also relate them to other techniques of global governance, such as disengagement, decolonization and peace-keeping in multi-ethnic states, and related phenomena like secessions. While the focus is geopolitical, we also cover the experiences of those most affected by partition, as well as questions of memory and identity. Finally, we will also attend to contrasting methods and styles of scholarship, ranging from political geography, international relations to oral history.

Programme

 

10 October: General Discussion

• The many cases of partition: the three partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth century, Africa and Samoa in the 1880s, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and Ireland after the First World War, Czechoslovakia in the interwar years, Korea immediately after World War II, and then Burundi, Cyprus, Kosovo, and Sudan among others.

• Stefano Bianchini, et al, eds., Partition: Reshaping States and Minds (Abingdon: Frank Cass, 2005), "Introduction: The Infamous Event," by Ranibir Samaddar

• Smita Tewari Jassal and Eyal Ben-Ari, eds., The Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts (London: Sage 2007), "Introduction: The Partition Motif: Concepts, Comparisons, Considerations," by Smita Tewari Jassal and Eyal Ben-Ari.

 

Some Older Literature

 

• Arthur Silva White, ‘The Partition of Central Africa’, Scottish Geographical Journal, 4, 3 (1888), 152-158.

• Charles Lucas, The Partition and Colonization of Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1922).

• Joseph Waldo Ellison, ‘The Partition of Samoa: A Study in Imperialism and Diplomacy’, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Sep., 1939), pp. 259-288.

• Eurof Walters, ‘Franco-Russian Discussions on the Partition of Austria-Hungary, 1899’, The Slavonic and East European Review, 28, 70 (1949), 184-192.

• B. S. K., ‘Czechoslovakia: Economic Effects of Partition’, Bulletin of International News, 15, 21 (22 October 1938), 8-14

• George M. Berger, ‘The Partition of Europe’, The Australian Quarterly, 17, 2 (1945), 44-51.

 

17 October 17: Conceptual and Contextual Questions

Reading:

• Radha Kumar, ‘The Troubled History of Partition’, Foreign Affairs, 76, 1 (1997), 22-34. 

• Mark Mazower, ‘Minorities and the League of Nations in Interwar Europe’, Daedalus, 126, 2 (2002), 47-65.

• Brendan O'Leary, ‘Analysing Partition: Definition, Classification and Explanation’, Political Geography, 26, 8 (2007), 886-908.

Extra Reading:

• Stanley Waterman, ‘Partition—A Problem in Political Geography’, in Peter J. Taylor and John W. House (eds.), Political geography: recent advances and future directions (Routledge, Croom Helm, 1984), 98-116.

• Stanley Waterman, ‘Partition and Modern Nationalism’, in Colin H. Williams and Eleonore Kofman (eds.), Community conflict, partition and nationalism (London: Routledge, 1989), 117-132.

• Mark Mazower, ‘The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933-1950’, Historical Journal, 47:2 (2004), 379-39. 

• T. G. Fraser, Partition in Ireland, India and Palestine: Theory and Practice (London: Macmillan, 1984).

• William Roger Louis, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).

• Shulamit Eliash, The Harp and the Shield of David: Ireland, Zionism and the State of Israel (Routledge, 2007).

 

24 October 24: Europe I

Reading

• Mark Mazower, Dark Continent, ch. 7.

• Avi Shlaim, ‘The Partition of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War’, Review of International Studies, 11, 2 (1985), 123-137.

• John Farquarson, ‘”The Essential Division”: Britain and the Partition of Germany 1945–9’, German History, 9, 1 (1991), 23-45.

Extra Reading:

• Lloyd C. Gardner, Spheres of Influence: The Great Powers Partition in Europe, From Munich to Yalta (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1993).

• Antonio Varsori and Elena Calandri (eds.), The Failure of Peace in Europe, 1943-48 (London: Palgrave, 2002).

• Charles S. Maier (ed.), ‪The Cold War in Europe: Era of a Divided Continent‬, 3rd edn. (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1981).

• Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alternative to Partition: For a Broader Conception of America's Role in Europe (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965).

 

WEEK 4 (date to be announced): Europe II

Reading:

• Detlef Brandes, ‘National and International Planning of the “transfer” of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland’, in Richard Bessel and Claudia Haake (eds.), Removing People: Forced

• Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), 281-296.

• Jerzy Kochanowksi, ‘Gathering Poles into Poland: Forced Migration from Poland’s Former Eastern Territories’, in Philipp Ther and Anja Siljak (eds.), Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 135-154.

• Pol O'Dochartaigh, ‘Ostpolitik, Nordpolitik: Partition and National Identity in Germany and Ireland’, German Life and Letters, 63, 3 (2010), 311-330.

Extra Reading:

• Mark Blacksell, ‘Partition, die Wende, and German Unification’, Applied Geography,  17, 4 (1997), 257-265.

 

7 November: India I

Reading:

• Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India‬ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chs. 1 & 2.

• Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), introduction.

• Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009), ch. 2.

Extra Reading:

• Selected Research Bibliography on the Partition of India. Compiled by Vinay Lal, UCLA 

• Partition of 1947 - India - Pakistan: Some Scattered Resources 

• Yasmin Khan, ‘Asking New Questions about the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent’, History Compass, 2, 1 (2004).

• Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004).

• Lucy P. Chester, ’The 1947 Partition: Drawing the Indo-Pakistani Boundary’, American Diplomacy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2002).

• Lucy Chester, Borders and Conflict in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab (Manchester University Press, 2009).

• Joya Chatterji, Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India 1947-1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007).

• Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem, 2005).

 

14 November: India II

Reading:

• Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Can a Muslim Be an Indian?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41, 4 (1999), 608-629.

• Urvashai Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (London: Hurst, 2000), chs 1. & 8.

• Debali Mookerjea-Leonard, ‘Quarantined: Women and the Partition’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24, 1 (2004), 35-50.

Extra Reading:

• Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India (Kolkata: Stree, 2003). 

• Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).

• Gargi Chakravartty, Coming out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal (New Delhi: Bluejay Books, 2005).

• Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Nobody’s People: the Dalits of Punjab in the Forced Removals of 1947’, in Richard Bessel and Claudia Haake, eds., Removing People: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), 297-320.

• Ian Talbot, ‘The 1947 Partition of India and Migration: A Comparative Study of Punjab and Bengal’, in Richard Bessel and Claudia Haake, eds., Removing People: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), 321-348.

 

21 November 21: Palestine I

Reading:

• Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), introduction & ch. 1.

• Aaron S. Kleiman, ‘The Resolution of Conflicts Thought Territorial Partition: The Palestine Experience’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22, 2 (1980), 281-300.

• Itzhak Galnoor, ‘The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919-1947)’, Israel Studies, 14, 2 (2009), 74-87.

Extra Reading:

• Penny Sinanoglu, ‘British Plans for the Partition of Palestine, 1929–1938’, Historical Journal, 52, 1 (2009), 131–152.

• Penny Sinanoglu, ‘The Peel Commission and Partition, 1936-1938’, in Rory Miller, ed., Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years (Ashgate, 2010).

• Kermit Roosevelt, ‘The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics’, Middle East Journal, 2, 1 (1948), 1-16.

• Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, The Palestinian People: A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

• Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001).

• Benny Morris, 1948: A History of The First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008).

 

28 November: Palestine II

Reading:

• Rashid Khalidi, ‘The Palestinians and 1948: the Underlying Causes of Failure’, in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12-36.

• Benny Morris, ‘Explaining Transfer: Zionist Thinking and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem’, in Richard Bessel and Claudia Haake, eds., Removing People: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), 349-360.

 

5 December: Memory

Reading:

• Dipesh Chakarbarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), ch. 8.

• Ahmad H. Sa'adi, "Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity," Israel Studies, 7, 2 (Summer 2002), 175-98.

• Jonathan D. Greenberg, ‘Generations of Memory: Remembering Partition in India/Pakistan and Israel/Palestine’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 25, 1 (2005), 89-110.

 

12 December: Revisiting Partitions, Ethnic Conflict and International Order

Reading:

• Lucy P. Chester, ‘The Debate over Partition as an Attempt to End Violence in South Asia and the Palestine Mandate’, in Stathis Kalyvas, Ian Shapiro, and Tarek Masoud (eds.), Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 75-96

• Chaim Kaufman, ‘When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth Century’, International Security, 23, 2 (1998), 120-156.

• Carter Johnson, ‘Partitioning to Peace: Sovereignty, Demography, and Ethnic Civil Wars’, International Security, 32, 4 (2008), 140-170.

Extra Reading:

• Nicholas Sambanis, ‘Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature’, World Politics, 52, 4 (2000), 437-483.

• Lucy P. Chester, ‘Boundary Commissions as Tools to Safeguard British Interests at the End of Empire’, Journal of Historical Geography, 34, 3 (2008), 494-515.