International Dimensions of Decolonization in the Middle East and North Africa: A Primary Source Collection

This text has two goals: to make a few observations about how the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) may inform how we think about decolonization, and to introduce the Wilson Center Digital Archive collection, "International Dimensions of Decolonization in the Middle East and North Africa."

Many historians agree decolonization had a focal time and space: the 1940s-1960s in Asia and Africa. The very term decolonization, though coined slightly earlier, became popular in this context; it was then that European empires finally foundered; and the sheer number both of countries and of people that became independent was unprecedented, as was the thickness of Afro-Asian relationships. "I hope this primary source collection - like others, such as https://revolutionarypapers.org - adds to how we see and teach these decades. After all, scholars of decolonization continue to work on Asia and Africa more than on MENA.

At the same time, I hope this collection helps complicate notions of a focal time and space, building on the view that the modern age experienced decolonization before the 1940s-1960s. Thus, Dane Kennedy’s Decolonization: A Short Introduction (2016) talks of a first “wave” in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and of a second wave in western Asia and eastern Europe following World War I, with roots in the nineteenth century in the Ottoman case.[i] On a related note, landmark texts like Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and L. J. Butler’s Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States (2008) see deep “roots” of postwar decolonization in the interwar years.[ii]

Sure, some MENA countries became fully independent during World War II and in the following decade. This timing roughly corresponded to decolonization in Asia, though it slightly predated the peak of decolonization in Africa. But what happened in those parts of MENA from the late 1910s constituted more than simply roots of post-World War II decolonization.[iii] Moreover, there are three prominent cases of still unfulfilled decolonization in MENA: the Palestinians, Sahrawis, and Kurds, who at best have low levels of political autonomy. In short, in this collection the number of documents from the 1940s-1960s reflect the importance of those decades. At the same time, documents also on earlier and later decades point to other and/or longer timeframes of decolonization— a view that makes sense doubly if we take seriously the notion of decolonization as a process.[iv]

Regarding MENA, consider the following factors. Before 1918, some Arabs lived in a basically sovereign state, the Ottoman Empire—unlike most Asians and Africans. Following World War I, many Arabs demanded full or quasi independence rather than full and equal integration into empire, as most Africans and many Asians did at the least until the late 1920s and in many cases until the 1950s. To this end, Arabs fought almost ten bloody revolts in the interwar period. Multiple Arab countries indeed (Egypt in 1923/1937; Iraq in 1930) or almost (Lebanon and Syria in 1936) got far-reaching though certainly not complete sovereignty. Three large countries in MENA, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran, were independent (though, as noted further below, in a somewhat impaired way); and all three, even the two non-Arab ones, were involved in Arab politics. In interwar Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, some national government institutions included, however variedly, Arabs officials; Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon even knew (however limited) national elections.[v] Moreover, as noted and to fast-forward to today, multiple people in MENA are still demanding a state of their own but have not (yet) succeeded.

If MENA helps complicate decolonization, the reverse holds, too. Decolonization complicates how we conceive modern MENA history. Before I outline why, let me take a step back and state a fact recognized by any scholar of modern MENA. The spatial reference “Middle East and North Africa” is a compound of two elements (ME and NA) as well as relational (middle of what? east of where? north of what?). As a result, it is recognizably constructed. That is, it is political and as such has a history, including earlier terms like the Near East that included parts of Ottoman-ruled Europe. If this primary source collection nonetheless uses the term MENA, it is for the sake of convenience. Most Anglophone academics and almost all non-academics use the term. So do people in MENA; thus, “the Middle East” is al-sharq al-awsat in Arabic, khawar-e mianeh in Persian, orta doğu in Turkish, and ha-mizrah ha-tikhon in Hebrew.

Let us now turn to our question: how does decolonization help complicate modern MENA? One answer is that MENA was not decolonized at once. The most assertive version of this statement contains four overlapping chapters and two complicating sets of cases.

In a first chapter, a part of MENA was entwined with Europe. Before World War I, actors in many European provinces of the Ottoman Empire—then seen as part of the Near East—used the support of self-interested European powers to gain far-reaching autonomy and in some cases suzerainty. Following World War I, the League of Nations member states granted those polities international recognition as sovereign states; in parallel, the Turkish National Movement rolled back the 1918/1919 Allied and Greek occupation of parts of Anatolia, gaining international recognition as a sovereign state, too. This post-World War I chapter of decolonization (and its prewar beginnings) happened in the same political context as the international recognition of states in eastern and central Europe. Moreover, it featured similar international legal instruments, most important League of Nations minority protection treatises. The post-war sovereignty of European ex-Ottoman polities—i.e. the afore-noted second wave of decolonization—did not just settle the Ottoman Empire’s fate, then. It also concluded a decades-long process in which (what we now call) MENA and (southeastern) Europe came apart.

A second chapter involves the Asian ex-provinces of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. There, many Arabs resented the fact that the League of Nations and its members, including European empire-states like Britain and France, granted independence only to post-Ottoman Europeans. Thus, in 1919 the Syrian General Congress asserted that “Considering the fact that the Arabs inhabiting the Syrian area are not naturally less gifted than other more advanced races and that they are by no means less developed than the Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks, and Roumanians at the beginning of their independence, we protest against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, placing us among the nations in their middle stage of development which stand in need of a mandatory power.”[vi] The struggle for independence persisted throughout the interwar years. It succeeded in 1930 in Iraq, in admittedly “light” form, though Iraq did become a League of Nation member in 1932. And it succeeded fully in 1943/1946 in Lebanon and Syria, in 1946 in Jordan, and in 1948 in Israel, a special case because of the Zionist movement’s longstanding dependence on Britain. On a related note Egypt, which by law was an Ottoman province until 1914, was given more autonomy in 1923, negotiated an independence “light” in 1937 and became a League member the selfsame year, and in 1954 negotiated the withdrawal of the British troops that had remained in the Suez Canal Zone. If we think of these events together, we see a stretch of time that begins in what often is seen as one decolonization wave—the weakening and then break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the end point of which happens in parallel to related developments in eastern Europe following World War I—and ends with the start of another decolonization wave, that of Asian colonies after World War II.

A third chapter turns around French North Africa. Here, decolonization happened as France was reconfiguring its late empire especially in West sub-Saharan Africa in the 1950s. This showed even in Algeria, which did not become independent in the 1950s. Here, the French government and many citizens argued until 1960 if not until Algeria’s independence in 1962 that this country bridges France and Africa. The African connection was manifest also in the especially tight postcolonial relationship that both the Northern African countries of Morocco and Tunisia and a good number of West African states have entertained with France.

A fourth chapter concerns Britain’s decision, in 1968, to evacuate most bases “east of Suez” by 1971. This affected Britain’s remaining possessions in the Gulf, many of whose rulers at first were wary about Britain’s withdrawal. More important to us, those MENA countries were decolonized as part of a broader British geostrategic repositioning, which included withdrawing from military bases that London had kept in the Southeast Asian states of Malaysia and Singapore and in the Indian Ocean state of The Maldives following their independence in 1963, 1965, and 1965, respectively.

This brings me to the two complicating sets of cases. One concerns three states: Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. In the interwar years, their sovereignty was in some way impaired. Turkey accepted a League of Nations minority protection treaty. Saudi Arabia, officially born in 1932, was subsidized by Britain until 1924 and entertained a special relationship with that European empire through World War II. And in the Iranian province of Khuzistan the Anglo-Persian/Iranian Oil Company was a state within the state. Even so, these three states basically were sovereign. (One might add Afghanistan.) That is, while interwar MENA like Africa had far more colonized than sovereign polities, the share of sovereign polities was higher. Moreover, those three polities mattered: large and powerful, they all interacted with and affected actors in colonized polities in the Middle East.[vii]

The other complicating set of cases concerns the Sahrawis, Palestinians, and Kurds. Sure, the three cases differ greatly. But together, they make MENA the region in the world with the internationally most visible cases of people who are still calling and fighting for an independent state, in however changing and varied ways. Moreover, they share a crucial trait. Each one originated in one of the afore-noted decolonization chapters. In 1920 the Ottoman-Allied Treaty of Sèvres, which was signed by Sultan Mehmed VI but not ratified by the Ottoman parliament, foresaw a Franco-British-influenced Kurdish state. The Palestinians were the great losers of the second chapter of decolonization in MENA. And the Sahrawi independence story in a sense starts in the third chapter, i.e. decolonization in French North Africa. Some Sahrawis fought on Morocco’s side in a brief confrontation with Spain in northern areas of the Spanish-ruled West Sahara following Morocco’s independence in 1956. That confrontation and the following Franco-Spanish military punishment, Operation Ouragan, formed the first chapter on the long way to Spain’s withdrawal, in 1975, from the West Sahara, which was divided between Morocco and (until 1979) Mauritania.

Let us circle back to the question of how decolonization helps complicate the history of modern MENA. Another answer concerns international dimensions.[viii] As indicated by the title of this collection, these are its primary sources’ common distinguishing trait. This focus is inspired and informed by a bourgeoning body of scholarship. Some historians are showing that some states self-consciously functioned as linchpins between multiple regions, for instance Arab-African Egypt and Algeria.[ix] Certain cities—Dar es Salaam, Cairo, and Paris, among others—became hubs for activists from various countries.[x] There were international networks like the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization, founded in Cairo in 1957.[xi] And there were not only south-south networks[xii] but also east-south ones[xiii] and west-south ones.[xiv]

Choosing my documents, I have sought a rough balance between stories that tie MENA actors to Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. I also have mixed different textual genres. And while there are a good number of documents whose content may be called plainly political, socio-economic and cultural aspects often feature, too.

Here, an aside is in order. While putting together this collection, it became increasingly clear that “the political” permeated everything and was present everywhere. Indeed, decolonization arguably charged and changed what is and counts as “the political.” This is a vague and may be trite statement―but perhaps still interesting to look into.

Let me flag two problems with this collection that I see. (There must be more.) First, the collection’s documents do not feature enough non-elite actors and women, rarely talk of religion, and do not broach environmental issues―limitations that collection users should realize. And second, the original documents in this collection are in Middle Eastern and European languages, not also African and Asian languages. To be more precise: sources by MENA actors are all in MENA and European languages, and sources showing how people from outside MENA looked at and interacted with the region are in European languages.

Together, these linguistic and thematic strengths and weaknesses have a two-fold consequence. This collection is a kaleidoscope, refracting and reflecting many actors, themes, spaces, and periods. But this does not mean that it is all-encompassing and, to again state the obvious, it neither is neutrally balanced. It cannot be. Even ifI would have included (more) non-elite, environmental, and religious sources and sources by and on women and in African and Asian languages, I would have balanced them differently than anybody else. Ifan overall story emerges at all from this collection, it really isa story, not the story.

Here are three examples. First, I decided to include more documents on the Palestinians than on the Sahrawis and Kurds, for I think the Palestinian cause overall has had a greater presence both in the region and beyond than the Sahrawi and Kurdish ones. However―my second example―I did include all these three cases. I did so although some people would see the Sahrawi and Kurdish struggles not at all as decolonization but simply as a struggle against regional states, especially Morocco and Turkey. (Interestingly, fewer people would see the Palestinian struggle this way, perhaps because many see the Jewish State as not really being of MENA, though in MENA.) To be sure, there are differences between the Palestinian, Sahrawi, and Kurdish struggles and people gaining independence from an empires. But as noted earlier, those struggles each began as unresolved cases of a decolonization chapter. Moreover, many Sahrawis, Kurds, and Palestinians who desire independence see their struggle as part of a longer arch of decolonization and of anti-imperial struggle. The latter brings me to my third example. This collection comprises documents by actors who in the 1960s-1970s invoked anti-imperial(ist) struggles, and features a document on the Israeli establishment’s fear about linkages between the Israeli and US Black Panthers. I have included these documents so we see how decolonization politics, relationships, and terminologies continued from the 1960s, blending into an anti-imperialism that often turned around the United States.

Such issues are contextualized in the blurbs I have written for each document; each blurb also contains a few key secondary source references. Although this collection includes a few English and some already translated texts, I have translated most documents. I gratefully acknowledge Professors Lara Harb and Nader Uthman’s help with a handful of Arabic words. As I am a historian rather than a linguist or professional translator, the translations will not dazzle the reader―but, I hope, nonetheless be of use.

List of Documents

Document No. 1
An Arab American reflects on World War I (1917)
“Nahwa Suriya” (“Towards Syria”), December 19, 1917
al- Fatat (New York, NY), December 19, 1917, p. 1. Original document contributed by Stacy Fahrenthold; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 2
Egyptian nationalists try to meet Woodrow Wilson in Paris (1919)
Letter, Saad Zaghloul to His Excellency President Woodrow Wilson, June 6, 1919
Egyptian Delegation to the Peace Conference. Collection of Official Correspondence FROM NOVEMBER 11, 1918 TO JULY 14, 1919 (Paris: Published by the Delegation, 1919), pp. 58-60. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Letter, Gilbert F. Close to Mr. Saad Zaghloul, June 6, 1919
Egyptian Delegation to the Peace Conference. Collection of Official Correspondence FROM NOVEMBER 11, 1918 TO JULY 14, 1919 (Paris: Published by the Delegation, 1919), p. 61. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 3
Postwar musings about a free city & free port Beirut (1919)
A Handwritten Note by Alfred Sursock, Omar Beyhum, Habib Trad, Joseph Audi, and A. Bassoul, to General Henri Gouraud, 1919
Document #1554, Sursock Archives, Phoenix Center for Lebanese Studies, Université de Saint Esprit, Kaslik, Lebanon. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 4
Resolution of the Syrian General Congress (1919)
Resolution of the Syrian General Congress at Damascus, July 2, 1919
Translation from J.C. Hurewitz, The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, vol. 2: British-French Supremacy, 1914-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 180-182. Annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 5
A conservative German comment on Turkish independence (1923)
"Die äussere Politik der Woche” (“The Lausanne Peace Treaty"), July 25, 1923
Die Neue Preussische Zeitung (Kreuzzeitung) (July 25, 1923), p. 1-2. Original contributed by Marcus Michaelsen; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 6
Stalin addresses the Communist University for Laborers of the East (1925)
J.V. Stalin, “The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the Far East: Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, May 18, 1925,” May 18, 1925
Translation from J.V. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, 1925 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), pp. 135-154. Contributed by Cyrus Schayegh

Document No. 7
Rockefeller-financed social sciences at the American University of Beirut (1926)
Report Submitted by the Faculty of the American University of Beirut [to the Rockefeller Foundation] concerning the Opportunity to train Students for Service in the Near East through Commerce and the Social Sciences (Excerpt), February 1926
Rockefeller Foundation Records, Projects (Grants), RG 1, SG 1.1, Lebanon Series 833.S, Box 9, Folder 61, Rockefeller Archive Center. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh. Courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center (https://rockarch.org/).

Letter, Bayard Dodge to Thomas B. Appleget (Excerpts), April 12, 1931
Record Group 1.1 (FA386), series 1.1 Projects, Box 8, Folder 59, Rockefeller Archive Center. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh. Courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center (https://rockarch.org/).

Letter, Bayard Dodge to Edmund E. Day (Excerpts), February 20, 1935
Rockefeller Foundation Records, Projects (Grants), RG 1, SG 1.1, Lebanon Series 833.S, Box 9, Folder 60, Rockefeller Archive Center. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh. Courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center (https://rockarch.org/).

Document No. 8
Nationalist Scouting in Greater Syria (1927)
“Al-kashfiyya khidma wataniyya” (“Scouting is a National Service”), 1927
al-Kashshaf (1:4) (1927): 299-302. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 9
The Etoile Nord Africaine addresses the foundation conference of the League against Imperialism in Bruxelles (1927)
Statement of the Delegation of the "Etoile Nord Africaine" ("North African Star") by Hadj-Ahmed Messali, February 1927
International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, League Against Imperialism Archives, ARCH00804, international congress against colonial oppression and imperialism. brussels, 1927, Inventory 15, https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00804. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 10

Muslim nationalist Amir Shakib Arslan analyzes the Muslim World (1930)
Shakib Arslan, 'Why Muslims Lagged Behind and Others Progressed' (Excerpts), November 1930
Used by permission, from Shakib Arslan, Why Muslims Lagged Behind and Others Progressed, trans. Nadeem M. Qureshi, p.14-27 & p.121-122 first published (2021) by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd (www.austinmacauley.com). Annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 11
“Asia must reorganize her continental life”: the Indian poet-intellectual Rabindranath Tagore visits Iran (1932)
Rabindranath Tagore, “Discussion with Educationists in Tehran,” May 3, 1932
Rabindranath Tagore, Journey to Persia and Iraq: 1932, transl. from Bengali by Surendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, and Sukhendu Ray (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2003), 150-154. Annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Rabindranath Tagore, “Interview with Jenabe Dashty, Member of Parliament, Persia,” May 11, 1932
Rabindranath Tagore, Journey to Persia and Iraq: 1932, transl. from Bengali by Surendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, and Sukhendu Ray (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2003), 154-159. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 12
An Arab communist condemns Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia (1936)
Salim Khayyata, “Oppressed Ethiopia, or the Start of the Final Fight Against Colonialism in the Period of its Downfall” (Excerpts), 1936
Salim Khayyata, Al-Habasha al-mazluma, aw fatihat akhar niza‘ li-l-isti‘mar fi dawr inhiyarihi (Oppressed Ethiopia, or The Start of The Final Fight Against Colonialism in the Period of its Downfall) (Beirut: Matba‘at rawdat al-funun, 1936), p. alif, jim, dal, ha, zay, ha, ta, ya, kaf, lam. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 13
Egyptian intellectual and institution builder Taha Hussein locates Egypt vis-à-vis East and West (1938)
Taha Hussein, 'The Future of Culture in Egypt' (Excerpts), 1938

Taha Hussein, The Future of Culture in Egypt, translated from the Arabic original [Mustaqbal al-thaqafa fi Misr (1938)] by Sidney Glazer (New York: Octagon Books, 1975), 2-7, 148-155.

Document No. 14
Jawaharlal Nehru meets the nationalist wafd party in Egypt (1938)
Jawaharlal Nehru, “A Letter from the Mediterranean,” June 13, 1938
S. Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 9 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1976), 8-17. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Letter, Jawaharlal Nehru to Nahas Pasha, October 1, 1938
S. Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 9 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1976), 175-179. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 15
The Arab Conference for Combatting Fascism in Beirut (1939)
“'Mukafahat al-fashishtiyya!” (“Combatting Fascism!”), May 1939
al-Tali‘a 5, no. 5 (1939): 347-348. Original ontributed by Götz Nordbruch; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

“Muqarrarat mu'tamar mukafahat al-fashishtiyya” (“The Resolutions of the Conference for the Fight against Fascism”), May 1939
al-Tali‘a 5, no. 5 (1939): 390-391. Original contributed by Götz Nordbruch; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 16
A report on public relations and lobbying by the Arab League Office in Washington, DC (1947)
Report on the Activities of the Arab Office, Washington, for the First Six Months Beginning Nov.1.1945 (Excerpts), December 2, 1947
Box S25/4153, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel. Original contributed by Daniel Rickenbacher; transcribed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 17
A Yishuvi delegation addresses the First Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi (1947)
Remarks by Professor Hugo Bergman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Leader of the Jewish Delegation from Palestine at the Asian Relations Conference, April 1947
Asian Relations: Being Report of the Proceedings and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, March-April, 1947 (New Delhi: Asian Relations Organization, 1948), 56-58.

Document No. 18
Moroccan decolonization and the United Nations (1947 and 1950)
Letter, Secretary General of the Hizb al-islah al-watani to Arab Representatives in the US, June 5, 1947
Mehdi Bennouna File, Vol. 1, Bennouna Family Archive, Tetouan, Morocco. Original contributed by David Stenner; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

“Ba‘d khams sanawat” (“After Five Years:), October 24, 1950
al-A'lam (October 24, 1950), p. 1&4. Original contributed by David Stenner; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 19
An Egyptian critique of early postwar US society (1949)
Sayed Kotb [Sayyid Qutb], “The World is an Undutiful Boy!,” 1949
Fulcrum 3, no. 1 (1949): 29, University of Northern Colorado Archives, Record Group 10, Sub-Series 5. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 20
Iran’s Prime Minister Muhammad Musaddiq on economic decolonization at the UN (1951)
Complaint of Failure by the Iranian Government to Comply with Provisional Measures Indicated by the International Court of Justice in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case (S/2357), October 15, 1951
Security Council Official Records, 6th Year : 560th Meeting, 15 October 1951, S/PV.560, UN Official Document System, Job Number N5191915, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N51/919/15/pdf/N5191915.pdf. Contributed by Cyrus Schayegh

Document No. 21
Committing contemporary Arab literature to the postcolonial age (1953)
“Risalat al-Adab” (“Al-Adab's Message”), 1953
al-Adab 1, no. 1 (1953), 1-2. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 22
Early postcolonial Egypt’s Africa (1954 and 1958)
Cairo Radio’s External Broadcasts: Broadcasts in Swahili, July 9, 1954
BBC. Summary of World Broadcasts. Part IV: The Arab World, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Persia. (No. 481. 9th July 1954), p. 32-33. Original contributed by James Brennan; transcribed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Abd al-Mun‘im Shumays, “Ghana: A Liberated African State” (Excerpts), 1958
 ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Shumays, Ghana: Dawla afriqiyya mutaharrara [Ghana: A Liberated African State], series kutub siyasiyya #66 (Cairo: Dar al-Qahira li-l-taba‘a, 1958), 5-11. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 23
Nasser’s Suez Canal nationalization speech (1956)
Speech by President Nasser, Alexandria (Extract), July 26, 1956
The Suez Canal Problem, July 26-September 22, 1956: A Documentary Publication (Washington, DC: The Department of State, 1956), pp 25-31. Print. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 24
The British Empire stops speaking its name (1956)
Middle East (Situation): Debated in the Commons Chamber, Monday, December 3, 1956
Middle East Situation, cc.877-896, Commons Sitting of 3 December 1956, Series 5 Vol. 561, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1956-12-03/debates/cf6978a9-69e9-4ec1-82e6-146e7be245c8/MiddleEast(Situation).

Document No. 25
US Senator John F. Kennedy’s Algeria Speech and an Algerian and French reaction thereto (1957)
Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C, July 2, 1957
Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 784, "Algeria Speech," John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-states-senate-imperialism-19570702. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Telegram, Colonel [Amar] Ouamrane to Lt. John Kennedy, Senator, Washington, July 13, 1957
Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Senate Files, Speeches and the Press, Algerian Speech File, 1957, Mixed comments, unsorted, France, JFKSEN-0920-004, p. 109, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKSEN/0920/JFKSEN-0920-004. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Letter, Jacques F. [illegible] to John Kennedy, July 11, 1957
Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Senate Files, Speeches and the Press, Algerian Speech File, 1957, Mixed comments, unsorted, France, JFKSEN-0920-004, p. 3, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKSEN/0920/JFKSEN-0920-004. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 26
Algerian FLN representative Frantz Fanon addresses the First All-African People’s Conference in Ghana (1958)
Contribution of Algeria to the Construction of Africa, December 24, 1958
El Moudjahid 34 (24 December 1958), 9. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 27
From Bandung to Cairo: President Gamal Abdel Nasser addresses the Afro-Asian Youth Conference (1958)
The Speech of President Gamal Abdel Nasser to the Afro-Asian Youth Conference, February 2, 1958
Sabri Abu al-Majd, Al-tadāmun al-afriqi al-āsiawi (Afro-Asian Solidarity) (Cairo: Lajnat kutub siāsiyya, n.d. [1959?]), 3-8. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 28
The head of the Italian oil company ENI talks about decolonization (1960)
Enrico Mattei, “On the Decolonization of States and of the Economy,” June 10, 1960
Archivio storico eni, fondo eni/ segreteria de! presidente Enrico Mattei, f. 64e, b. 90 - «II Gatto Selvatico», anno VI, 6 (giugno 1960), 6. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 29
Algeria as a worldwide capital of decolonization (1960s)
Elaine Mokhtefi, Algiers: Third World Capital. Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers (Excerpts), 2018
Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear. Annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 30
An Arab view of African American oppression and its link to decolonization (c. 1961)
Lam‘i al-Muti‘i, “The Tragedy of the Negros in America” (Excerpts), 1961
Lam‘i al-Muti‘i, Mas’at al-zunuj fi Amrikā (The Tragedy of the Negros in America), series Kutub siyasiyya (Political Books) #298 (Cairo: Dār al-qawmiyya li-l-tibāʻa wa-l-nashr, c. 1961), 5-6, 26, 28-29, 33, 34. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 31
An Egyptian Arab nationalist in Cuba (1961)
Ahmed Sa‘id, “Returning from Cuba” (Excerpts), 1961
Ahmed Sa‘id, ‘A’id min Kuba (Returning from Cuba), series Kutub qawmiyya (Political books) #106 (Cairo: Dār al-qawmiyya li-l-tibāʻa wa-l-nashr, 1961), 5-12. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 32
Israel, the Arab states, and Africa (1962-1963)
D.B., “To the New Comer,” July 1963
The African Student [Jerusalem] no 2 (July 1963), 16-22. Original contributed by Daniel Heller; annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Lam‘i al-Muti‘i, “From Bandung to Casablanca” (Excerpts), 1962
Lam‘i al-Muti‘i, Min Bandung ilā Dār al-Baydhā’ (From Bandung to Casablanca) (Cairo: Dār al-Qawmiyya, 1962 [?]), 27-34. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 33
An Argentinian leftist nationalist ideologue thinks with Gamal Abdel Nasser (1963)
Juan José Hernández-Arregui, “What is the National Being?” (Excerpts), 1963
Juan José Hernández-Arregui, ¿Qué es el ser nacional? (What is the National Being?) (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1963), 291-293. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 34
A call for decolonizing Arab oil (1965)
Abdallah al-Tariqi, “The Nationalization of the Arab Oil Industry: A National Necessity” (Excerpts), 1965
Abdallah al-Tariqi, “Ta’mim sina‘at al-bitrul al-‘arabiyya: dhurura qawmiyya” ("The Nationalization of the Arab Oil Industry: A National Necessity") (1965), reprinted in Abdallah al-Tariqi, Al- A'mal al-kamila (The Complete Works), ed. Walid Khadduri (Beirut: Markaz dirasat al-wahda al-‘arabiyya, 1999), 158-178 at 158-159 & 176-178. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 35
The first PLO visit to Beijing (1965)
Palestine Delegation in Peking, March 26, 1965
Peking Review 13 (March 26, 1965), pp. 5-6. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 36
A teach-in on the third phase of colonialism and on Iran in West Berlin (1967)
Lecture about the Situation in Persia by Dr. Bahman Nirumand, followed by a Discussion, on the Eve of the Shah’s Visit to West Berlin (Excerpts), June 1, 1967
“Vortrag über die Situation in Persien von Dr. Bahman Nirumand mit anschließender Diskussion am Vorabend des Schahbesuchs in Westberlin," Audio Tape 1, Signatur Ton/1104, ID 80737, Archiv der Freien Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 37
An Egyptian journalist on the Vietnam War (1968)
Ahmad Hamrush, “An Egyptian in Vietnam, Korea, and China” (Excerpts), 1969
Ahmad Hamrush, Masri fi Vietnam wa-Kuriya wa-l-Sin (An Egyptian in Vietnam, Korea, and China) (Cairo: Kitab al-yawm, 1969), 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 18. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 38
On US representations of Arabs (1967-69)
Edward Said, 'The Arab Portrayed', 1970
The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: an Arab Perspective, ed. Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 1-9. Annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

False Image of Arabs Challenged, June 1, 1969
Association for Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., Newsletter 2, no. 2 (June 1969): p. 1. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 39
A US Black Panther Party statement in Algeria on Palestine (1970)
Statement on Palestine by Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information, Black Panther Party, International Section, Alger, Algeria, September 18, 1970
Folder 9, CTN 5, BANC MSS 91/213/c, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, USA. Contributed by Michael R. Fischbach and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 40
An Israeli establishment report on US views of the Israeli Black Panthers (1971)
“If We Immigrate to Israel, We Are Bound to Incite the Panthers' Bitterness,” June 1, 1971
Yediot Aharonot (June 1, 1971): 19, 23. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 41
An Iranian leftist guerilla organization on the need to fight US-led imperialism across the Middle East (1973)
“A Declaration of the Cherikha-ye Fedai-ye Khalq about the Plan of Imperialism, Zionism, and Other Reactionaries and the Need for the [Middle Eastern] Region’s Revolutionary Forces to Unite” (Excerpts), February 1973
Nabard-e khalq: nashriyeh-ye dakheli vol. 1 (Bahman 1352s [January/February 1973]), 1-2, 6-9. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 42
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat addresses the United Nations (1974)
United Nations General Assembly Official Records, 29th Session : 2282nd Plenary Meeting, Agenda Item 108, 'Question of Palestine (continued), November 13, 1974
General Assembly Official Records, 29th Session : 2282nd Plenary Meeting, Wednesday, 13 November 1974, New York, A/PV.2282, United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/743671. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 43
A UN report on decolonization in the Spanish West Sahara (1975)
Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Spanish Sahara, November 7, 1975
Report of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Volume 3, 1974, A/9623/Rev.1[Vol.III], United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/724940. Contributed and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 44
Egypt’s “Big capitalism invites new colonialism” (1975)
Fu’ad Mursi, “The Economic Opening” (Excerpts), 1975
Fu’ad Mursi, Hadha al-infitah al-iqtisadi (The Economic Opening) (Jerusalem: Manshurat Salah Al-Din, 1977 [original: Cairo, 1975]), 138-141. Original contributed by Relli Shechter; translated and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 45
Imam Khomeini’s declaration upon arrival in Tehran (1979)
Imam Khomeini, “Declaration Upon Arrival at Tehran,” February 1, 1979
Hamid Algar, trans., Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), 252-253; original Persian text in Sayyid ‘Abd ar-Rasul Hijazi, ed., Majmu‘a-ye kamel az payamha-ye Imam Khomeini (Tehran, 1979), 2-3. Annotated by Cyrus Schayegh.

Document No. 46
A Kurdish umbrella organization in West Germany makes cultural, economic, and political demands (1980)
“Muttersprache Kurdisch” (“Mother Tongue Kurdish”), January 1980
KOMKAR Publikation 1 (January 1980): 5-7. Contributed, translated, and annotated by Cyrus Schayegh

[i] See e.g. Dane Kennedy, Decolonization: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), ch. 1.

[ii] Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and L. J. Butler, Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 127.

[iii] I first outlined this argument in “The Mandates and/as Decolonization,” in Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, ed. Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (London: Routledge, 2015), 412-419.

[iv] See e.g. Jan Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel’s Decolonization. A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), ch. 1.

[v] This paragraph draws on Yoav Di-Capua and Cyrus Schayegh “Why Decolonization?,” International Journal of Middle East Studies [IJMES] 52:1 (2020): 137-145.

[vi] Document translated in J.C. Hurewitz, The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, vol. 2: British-French Supremacy, 1914-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 180.

[vii] See e.g. Amit Bein, Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East: International Relations in the Interwar Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[viii] A perfectly complete title would have invoked “international and transnational dimensions.” I chose “international” for simplicity’s sake and because many documents are political and―more to the point―involve (proto/quasi)-governmental actors.

[ix] James Brennan, “Radio Cairo and the Decolonization of East Africa, 1953-64,” in Making a World after Empire, ed. Christopher Lee (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 2010), 173-195; Jeffrey Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

[x] George Roberts, “Politics, Decolonisation, and the Cold War in Dar es Salaam c.1965-72,” (PhD diss. University of Warwick, 2016); Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Zoe LeBlanc, “Circulating Anti-colonial Cairo: Decolonizing Information and Constructing the Third World in Egypt, 1952-1966,” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2019).

[xi] Reem Abou-El-Fadl, “Building Egypt’s Afro-Asian Hub: Infrastructures of Solidarity and the 1957 Cairo Conference,” Journal of World History 30:1-2 (2019): 157-192.

[xii] Christopher Lee, ed., Making a World after Empire (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 2010); Brenda Gayle Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956–1974 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Nataša Mišković, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska, eds., The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi-Bandung-Belgrade (London: Taylor & Francis, 2017); John Munro, The Anticolonial Front: The African American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization, 1945-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jürgen Dinkel, The Non-Aligned Movement. Genesis, Organization and Politics (1927-1992) (Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2019); Ronald Stephens and Adam Ewing, eds., Global Garveyism (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019).

[xiii] David Engerman, “The Second World’s Third World,” Kritika 12:1 (2011): 183-211; Eric Burton, ed., “Socialisms in Development,” special issue of Austrian Journal of Development Studies XXXIII:3 (2017); James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovsky, and Steffi Marung, eds., Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020); Sandrine Kott and Cyrus Schayegh, “Introduction: Eastern European-Middle Eastern Relations: Continuities and Changes from the Time of Empires to the Cold War.” Contemporary European History 30:4 (2021): 463-477.

[xiv] Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. 119-41; Fritz Keller, Gelebter Internationalismus. Österreichs Linke und der algerische Widerstand, 1958-1963 (Wien: Promedia Verlag, 2010); David Stenner, Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); Quinn Slobodian, Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).