A Moment in Time

In The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anti Colonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) Ezrez Manela argues that Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric of self-determination was used by nascent nationalist groups in Korea, China, Egypt, and India to justify and explain their motives before the global community. Wilson' famous Fourteen points speech before Congress in 1918 was seen by these various nationalist groups as a call for a new international order based on the principles of self-determination, self-government, and equal trade. Though Wilson did envision and explicitly call for an international order based on justice and fairness instead of military might, he did not foresee, nor did he favor, granting immediate self-government for all countries under colonial rule. Rather, Wilson believed self-determination should ideally be granted only to peoples who were mature enough to handle it. Wilson did favor a more immediate path to self-government for Korea, India, and Egypt than did either Japan or England, but ultimately the pragmatic considerations of traditional politics frustrated most of the goals the "international nationalist" movement agitated for in 1918-1919. Manela suggests that many of those nationalists, disillusioned by Wilson and the west, turned east towards the rising specter of a new cause that promised egalitarian government-Russian Bolshevism. And, Manela intimates, perhaps current global disenchantment with the U.S. may stem from this time, when the Wilsonian moment failed to achieve all that it might have. His prose is somewhat tedious, but the information is invaluable. The sections on the Korean independent movement led by Syngman Rhee, a devout Christian, are fascinating.