The Growth of Multi-Ethnic, Multiracial Intergovernmental Organizations
By Krishnan Srinivasan
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The European Empires were an amalgam of independent, semi-independent, and dependent territories held together by economic, strategic, political, demographic and cultural ties with the metropolitan country that varied greatly in strength and character from one dependency to the other.1 Transfer of sovereignty during the process of decolonization did not terminate European ambitions for a continuing role in their former colonies. The colonies and the widespread sphere of influence they represented for the metropolitan country were, for both Britain and France, economically and militarily exhausted as they were after the Second World War, one of the strongest arguments they could use for post-war international leverage and great power status. Both Britain and France therefore sought a means of advantageous association with their colonies after the war, though the adverse climate in the international arena, metropolitan weakness and nationalism in the colonies all militated against the re-imposition of colonial rule and of unreformed colonialism in particular.
The British-centred Commonwealth is one of the oldest international organizations in the world today, having started at the end of the nineteenth century. Its present character as a multi-racial, multi-ethnic association, however, came into being with the independence of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1947-8 and the incorporation of those countries as members. The Commonwealth grew rapidly in numbers during and after the 1960s with the transfer of power to several former colonies which then also joined the organization, and it currently numbers 53 members. The British, unlike the French, did not, or perhaps could not, craft durable ties with each colony before independence, but looked to the Commonwealth as the main conduit for providing desirable links and retaining influence after independence. Britain accordingly had a much more arms-length relationship with its ex-colonies than France.
Whereas for Britain, the biggest hurdle in terms of emotional impact, namely India, had been handled at the very start, French decolonization went on until 1962, with the most emotional case coming at the very end of the process. Neither the French Union of 1946 nor the Community of 1958 provided a successful machinery of association between France as the metropolitan power and its dependencies, and the Algerian crisis brought about the end of the Fourth Republic and the start of the Fifth, when the French were able to chart a new course after 1960, which was to be in pursuit of constructing a new architecture for European unity.
Senegal’s President Leopold Senghor’s original concept of la Francophonie was influenced by the Commonwealth but his idea was based on cultural harmony, combining negritude with French civilization and culture and francophone solidarity. His proposal was for an association that would lead to a great community of peoples sharing the same ideals while having their own particular interests and civilizations preserved. However, the French government of that time strongly preferred the route of bilateralism with its former dependencies to secure its objectives of creating the Franc Zone, ensuring raw material supplies, and concluding defence agreements and technical cooperation accords. Rather than encourage la Francophonie, which was pressed on Paris not only by Senghor but by several other French African leaders, France chose to concentrate its attention first on Europe. The original Francophonie summit therefore eventually took place only in 1986, and there have been ten held thus far. In 1997, an official Organisation de la Francophonie (OIF) was established with a Secretariat, with Abdou Diouf elected as the second Secretary-General in 2002. By 2006 the OIF comprised 53 members and 10 observers. Thanks to the composition of its membership, the organization has become a substantive forum with a broad agenda, with the result that summits now discuss a very wide spectrum of political and economic matters. Culture and language, originally the substance of the association, are now merely the support mechanisms.
Communidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), the Community of Portuguese- speaking countries, began even later still because the CPLP was conditioned by, but was not a product of, decolonization, and came on the scene long after Portugal’s decolonization process had been completed, and as many as 174 years after Brazil had achieved its independence. There was again some inspiration drawn from the Commonwealth’s example, and the foundation of the organization followed closely on Mozambique’s admission to the Commonwealth. The CPLP was established in Lisbon in 1996 to promote concerted political and diplomatic action between seven members, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and Sao Tome and Principe, with the aim of strengthening cooperation in cultural, social, economic, scientific and legal areas and to help members to expand their influence in international organizations. Timor-Leste joined as the eighth member in 2002, and there are two observer states.
Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (OEI) para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (Organization of Iberian-American States for Education, Science and Culture) began in 1949 as the Office of Latin American Education and in 1954 became an inter-governmental organization of sovereign states. In 1985 it expanded its objectives and approved new Statutes of Association, which include the objectives of promoting Spanish and Portuguese. The first summit was held in 1991 at Guadalajara and the latest one, the fifteenth, at Salamanca in Spain last year. The body now has 22 members, including Spain and Portugal, and two observers, Puerto Rico and Equatorial Guinea. Although the OEI’s original project may have been to concentrate on non-political cooperation, the character of the association changed as it started to discuss a broad-ranging political and economic agenda once the Heads of State and Government of member countries started to meet annually.
Each European colonial empire had been largely self-contained, though among their common features were a protected market for investment and trade, a common language, legal and administrative systems, educational methods and migration both to and from the dependencies. The Commonwealth traditionally is held by its supporters to be unique, but perhaps the reality is expressed more accurately by saying it is more a traditional than a formal organization. Its links are emotional and historical and it is the result of a historic evolution that cannot be imitated, but its claim to uniqueness lies more in its survival than in its modus operandi. Historical analogies are never perfect, but the Commonwealth did variously inspire the architects of the French Union, the short-lived Dutch-Indonesian Union, the OIF and the CPLP, and undoubtedly shares several characteristics with those associations.
Britain was neither forced to escape from authoritarianism nor was traumatized by the return of expatriates in large numbers to complicate domestic politics. The general lack of bitterness attending the British transfers of power was in stark contrast with many colonial endings in Africa and Asia of other European Empires. There was comparatively little armed conflict or displacement of expatriate settlers-- the Malaysian emergency, Cyprus and the Mau Mau were some of the exceptions to the rule. These factors enabled Britain’s post-imperial adjustment to take place more swiftly than in the other metropolitan countries. But the Commonwealth may nevertheless stand comparison to other organizations such as the OIF, the CPLP, and the OEI, and some similarities can inevitably be discerned.
In the eventual post-colonial organizations that were established, some major ex-colonies did not participate. In the Commonwealth, Ireland and Burma have stayed away, while in the OIF, Algeria and Syria are not present. Britain continued with a Sterling Area for some decades after the Second World War, and France has introduced and sustained a Franc Zone with fifteen countries in Africa. The Commonwealth was the inspiration for Senghor’s initiative to suggest a Francophone organization, though his vision of its objectives was very different from the British concept. In both organizations, the creation of the Secretariats under a Secretary-General took some time to evolve; in the Commonwealth in 1965, in the OIF in 1997. The main architects of both bodies at first considered several formulae to give the more weighty members a predominant role — an inner core and a periphery — before abandoning such ideas in favour of national equality. Both hold a summit every two years. Both organizations have generated a multitude of civil society activity, which on occasion appears somewhat removed from the realities of the strengths and weaknesses and even the directions, of the inter-governmental associations. Since 1993 civil society organizations accredited to the Commonwealth have organized events in the margins of the summit meetings, and in 2004 three hundred francophone civil society representatives assembled at Ouagadougou some weeks before the tenth OIF summit and agreed to convene before every future summit. Both organizations mark an annual day in March as a festival for celebration.
There are as many dissimilarities, of course. The Union and the Community gave way to the OIF but the Commonwealth has survived the passage of time. While Britain initially relied on the Commonwealth to provide continuing links in a special relationship with its former colonies, the OIF was more incidental for France, most of the erstwhile colonies being more closely bound to France by various treaty obligations. The precursors of the OIF, namely the Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) — which metamorphosed into the Agence Intergouvernmentale de la Francophonie (AIF), now the main organ of the OIF — started at around the time when Britain had already shed most of its optimism and nostalgia for the Empire and Commonwealth. There is little room for doubt that the British conceived the Commonwealth, whereas the initiative for the OIF came not from France, but from the leaders of francophone Africa. The French enterprise began slowly, with cultural, linguistic and technical linkages, and then moved cautiously to a political agenda, whereas the Commonwealth began with political consultations and only later came to adopt structured development cooperation after 1971. And the Commonwealth has never dealt with civilizational issues such as culture or the promotion of the English language.
France showed more interest in the ACCT/AIF/OIF after its construction of a united new Europe along with West Germany. On the other hand, the Commonwealth was seen by France as a delaying and negative factor in Britain’s entry to the EEC. France, after Vietnam, is the largest country in population in the OIF, while Britain lies only in fifth place in the Commonwealth – but both have the largest number of persons speaking the official language and by far the largest economies in the respective organizations. Whereas Canada might at times challenge Paris for influence in la Francophonie, Britain has no such rival in the Commonwealth. The OIF is not disposed to criticize French policy but members of the Commonwealth seek to use the organization to influence and at times to condemn British policy. France did not get embroiled in any heated discussion of colonial issues since the OIF was founded long after major colonial issues like the Vietnam and Algerian conflicts had been resolved. By contrast the Commonwealth Secretariat might not have come into being, or so soon, had it not been for the British-African clashes over Rhodesia. Unlike the situation in the Commonwealth, no country has left the OIF or been suspended or expelled.
In comparison to the Commonwealth, the CPLP was a long time in the conception—a full 23 years after Portugal’s escape from the authoritarian rule that enabled the colonies to achieve their independence. Unlike India, the biggest country by far in the Commonwealth which opted to join the organization at its independence, Brazil as the most populous country in CPLP was initially cool to the concept of any lusaphone association. The Portuguese set up the post-colonial organization after its EEC membership, and this served to enhance Lisbon’s prestige in Europe. The CPLP’s also holds summits every two years, and the organization places considerable emphasis on the promotion of the common Portuguese language.
The OEI also had a languorous start, having begun in 1949 as an association to enhance cooperation in education, science and culture. It evolved slowly into an intergovernmental body and then as an organization under the leadership of Heads of State and Government in 1991. It now meets at the summit annually, with a predominant position held by Spain and Portugal, for whom the organization raised their profile in Europe while they in turn seek to defend the interests of the Latin American members in the European Union. Apart from discussing a wide political, economic, technical and cultural agenda, the body has as one of its objectives the promotion of the Spanish and Portuguese languages. Like the Commonwealth and the OIF, the OEI took many years and several summit meetings to establish a Secretariat. An office began in Madrid in 1949 to deal with Education, Science and Culture. A new machinery for Ibero-Latin American cooperation was started in the 1990s, and a General Secretariat with a wide mandate had its statutes formally approved at Costa Rica in 2004.
The English Speaking Union launched by Sir Evelyn Wrench in the early twentieth century remains a civil society-based cultural and social institution. There have not yet been any steps taken to create an inter-governmental Anglophone community, nor for that matter is there any Commonwealth agenda to promote English, despite, or perhaps even because of, the nearly world-wide adoption of English today. The largest and most influential English-speaking country is neither the United Kingdom nor India, but the United States, which was never in the Commonwealth.
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| 1. | For the simplified purposes of this study, the generic terms ‘colony’ or ‘dependency’ are normally used. |
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Krishnan Srinivasan has been Permanent Secretary of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General and a Fellow of Cambridge and London Universities. He has published several books, including The Rise, Decline and Future of the British Commonwealth. |
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