Status Updates From La última colonia

Starting to pick up, lots of interest in the last few pages - particularly of quotidian aspects of the legal process. Fascinating how international law’s nation-state bias means the Chagossianer’s ability to return turns around negotiations over the sovereignty of two separate states, neither of which they are attached to.

It’s clear that the Chagossianers were totally wronged by the British government and deserve say over the islands, but why Mauritius? Sands agues for the “Recht von Mauritius auf Selbstbestimmung in Bezug auf Chagos,“ yet their claims lie in colonial contingency, etc. Feels like he falls foul of same binary, racialized logic he rightly criticizes the British gov. for.

Cool, the neoliberalization of international law by creating a market for legal decisions: “Die Schaffung des Internationalen Seegerichtshofs in Hamburg bedeutet, dass Den Haag sein Monopol verlor. Das dortige Gericht traf nun auf Konkurrenz, da ein Marktplatz internationaler Gerichte entstand, möglicherweise ein Reflex auf die Ideologien von Margaret Thatcher und Ronald Reagan…“

Lmao, the court established by the UN agreement on the Law of the Sea was basically just the American Dad Boys 12/Boys 13 bit, where it’s better than the ICJ because it has more boys. “Es hatte 21 Richter, sechs mehr als der Internarional Gerichtshof in Den Haag…”

The lack of faith in the ICC during the late-60s through 80s is quite interesting. Also fascinating on this page os both Sands’ and post-colonial states themselves increasingly seeing their position as one of the”developing nations” (“Entwicklungsländern”) by the late 70s. How does this shift occur, from post-colonial to development? Big question but lots of books on it, guess I just have to read.

I wonder if UN debate around the Chagos’ separation from Maldives pre-granting the latter independence reflected the fears of other post-colonial states struggling in years after flag decolonization with breakaway separatist movements challenging their homogenizing, nation-building projects. Sands approach is too Manichaean to see post-colonial states as anything else than a moral foil.

Sands’ vision is nation-state centric; it is not clear why Chagos should “belong” to the Maldives, hundreds of miles away, besides earlier colonial contingency lumping them together. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that during decolonization British officials feared breaking the Chagos off from a decolonizing Maldives would be viewed as “in einer Epoche der Dekolonisierung eine neue Kolonie zu schaffen.”

So far somewhat disappointing. 70 pages in already agreeing with Yuan Yi Zhu that Sands is reifying homogenizing, in essence “colonial” national projects in his effort to decolonize. The Chagos are arguably a side-show, which he idealizes as almost antediluvian paradise pre-British displacement. Despite his claim to center their voices, more attention is on international legal personalities than Chagossians.