A Sacred Trust of Development: Late Colonial (Unsuccessful) Attempts to Reshape the Norm of Self-Determination, 1945–65

As distinct scholars have shown, the codification of self-determination, in its anti-colonial declination, was the result of a troubled, and contested process that unfolded in different sites, but especially at the United Nations, after 1945. Global South actors played a pivotal role in shaping the norm of self-determination but they faced strenuous opposition by distinct state and non-state actors. This paper will address the ways through which the Belgian and Portuguese empires engaged with these debates, putting forward alternative, and competing, arguments concerning what self-determination meant and should mean, in order to resist decolonization. In doing so, Belgian and Portuguese diplomats and officials raised thorny questions about the articulation between economic and political development or between universal rights and juridical and cultural pluralism. These diplomatic and ideological efforts demanded a more systemic process of information-gathering and enabled new comparative exercises. This, in turn, made imperial records on a number of subjects, from forced labor to racial discrimination, more visible, triggering new political and legal initiatives from colonial powers aiming at reframing their colonial modus vivendi, often more de jure than de facto.