movement was spearheaded by educated elites who sought national
self-determination and modernization. They made some references to
old values and cultural traits to obtain the support of traditional
forces and to build new national identities, but their own orientation
was secular, egalitarian, and, often, socialist.^87 Mustafa Kemal Ata-
tu ̈rk, for instance, the founder and first president of the Republic of
Turkey, favored a secular and modernist state, gender equality, and a
culture more oriented toward Europe than the Islamic world, a pref-
erence clearly expressed in the replacement of arabic script by the
roman alphabet. Mahatma Gandhi’s fight for independence was
likewise intimately connected to his desire to abolish the old caste
system and transform Indian society. African leaders also defined their
vision of pan-Africanism and national liberation in reference to
socialism and communism.^88 In response to such developments, the
initial indifference and paternalistic attitude of the Western left
gradually gave place to an engagement in favor of decolonization. The
final picture was not without contradictions, since many socialists
clung to colonial views, but overall the liberation movements of the
South found their best allies among socialists and communists, as well
as within some humanitarian and Christian groups.^89
In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, about a third of the
world’s population still lived in territories identified by the United
Nations as “non self-governing.” Three decades later, most of these
territories had become independent countries and members of the UN
General Assembly. “To go to the UN in 1962,” explained a former
Jamaican ambassador, “for Jamaica to stand before the world and
claim the right to participate and for other countries to do so, this
was extraordinary.”^90 Today, less than two million people live in
(^87) Hobsbawm,The Age of Extremes, pp. 201–02 and 208–09.
(^88) Yves Person, “Le socialisme en Afrique noire,” in Jacques Droz (ed.),Histoire
89 ge ́ne ́rale du socialisme, Tome 3: de 1919 a^1945 , Paris, PUF, 1977, pp. 620–24. Eric J. Hobsbawm,Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 148–50; Girardet,L’ide ́e coloniale en France de 1871 a 1962 , pp. 367–402; Gilles Manceron,
“La gauche et la colonisation,” in Jean-Jacques Becker and Gilles Candar
(eds.),Histoire des gauches en France. Volume 1: L’he ́ritage du XIXesie`cle,
Paris, La De ́couverte, 2004, pp. 531–44; Gupta,Imperialism and the British
90 Labour Movement, pp. 391–93.
Don Mills, former Jamaican ambassador to the United Nations, quoted in Louis
Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss,Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas
and Global Challenges, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001, p. 25.
The rise of the modern state system (1776–1945) 105