Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:01:25.034Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Britain, India, and the United Nations: colonialism and the development of international governance, 1945–1960*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2014

Daniel Gorman*
Affiliation:
History Department, Hagey Hall, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. W., Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This article argues that the manner by which colonial societies achieved independence as sovereign states in the late 1940s and 1950s fundamentally shaped the parallel emergence of ideas and institutions of international governance, particularly at the newly created United Nations. Using Anglo-Indian relations as its primary focus, it argues that the internationalization of imperialism was particularly evident in two areas: postcolonial states’ negotiation of relations with their former colonial power within the UN system; and the influence of colonialism on international governance, particularly through the idea and practice of planning. The article assesses these developments through an analysis of British debates about United Nations membership for postcolonial states, India's role at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 where the United Nations was formed, India's campaign for a seat on the Security Council and its engagement with ECOSOC, the applicability of existing international conventions to postcolonial states, and the transfer of the ideal of planning from colonial to international governance.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank this journal's editors, as well as the anonymous readers, for their valuable comments. I would also like to thank the participants at the ‘From the League of Nations to the United Nations’ conference at the European University Institute in 2013, as well as Ryan Touhey, Matthew Stubbings, Saif Zaman, and Scott Johnston. This research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

References

1 See Steil, Benn, The battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the making of a new world order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazower, Mark, Governing the world: the history of an idea, New York: Penguin, 2012Google Scholar; and Clavin, Patricia, Securing the world economy: the reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Magee, Gary and Thompson, Andrew, Empire and globalisation: networks of people, goods and capital in the British world, c.1850–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bickers, Robert, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Bickers, ed., Settlers and expatriates: Britons over the seas, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambert, D. and Lester, A., eds., Colonial lives across the British empire: imperial careering in the long nineteenth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006Google Scholar; and Everill, Bronwen and Baughan, Emily, eds., ‘Special edition: empire and humanitarianism’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40, 5, 2012Google Scholar.

3 British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge (henceforth DOHP), DOHP 118, Interview transcript, John Latto Farquharson (Ian) Buist, p. 7, https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Buist.pdf (consulted 28 May 2013).

4 Symonds, Richard, In the margins of independence: a relief worker in India and Pakistan (1942–1949), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001Google Scholar, pp. 2, 4; United Nations Career Records Project, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. C. 4703/127–8, Symonds, UNCRP questionnaire, pp. 1–2.

5 Schwarz, Bill, The white man's world, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 1113Google Scholar.

6 See for instance Louis, W. Roger, ‘Public enemy number one: Britain and the United Nations in the aftermath of Suez’, in Martin Lynn, ed., The British empire in the 1950s: retreat or revival?, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 186–213Google Scholar; Turner, Oliver, ‘“Finishing the job”: the UN special committee on decolonization and the politics of self-governance’, Third World Quarterly, 34, 7, 2013, pp. 11931208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Martin, ed., European decolonization, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007Google Scholar; Berger, Mark, ‘After the Third World? History, destiny and the fate of Third Worldism’, Third World Quarterly, 25, 1, 2004, pp. 9–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and W. Roger Louis with Ronald Robinson, ‘The imperialism of decolonization’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 22, 3, 1994, pp. 462–511.

7 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Firm adherence to objectives’, speech in the UN General Assembly, Paris, 3 November 1948, in Nehru, Jawaharlal, India's foreign policy, New Delhi: Government of India, 1961, pp. 164–166Google Scholar.

8 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘An evolving policy’, speech delivered at the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi, 22 March 1949, in Nehru, India's foreign policy, pp. 48–9; Bhagavan, Manu, India and the quest for one world: the peacemakers, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 53–5.

9 Imlay, Talbot C., ‘International socialism and decolonization during the 1950s: competing rights and the postcolonial order’, American Historical Review, 18, 4, 2013, pp. 11051106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prashad, Vijay, The darker nations: a people's history of the Third World, New York: New Press, 2007, pp. 3144Google Scholar; Kelly, John D. and Kaplan, Martha, Represented communities: Fiji and world decolonization, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001Google Scholar, cited in Lee, Christopher, ‘Introduction’, in Christopher Lee, ed., Making a world after empire: the Bandung moment and its political afterlives, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010Google Scholar, p. 3. For a critical view, see Vitalis, Robert, ‘The midnight ride of Kwame Nkrumah and other fables of Bandung (Ban-doong)’, Humanity, 4, 2, 2013, pp. 261288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), 14 December 1960.

11 Clark, Claire, ‘Soviet and Afro-Asian voting in the UN General Assembly’, Australian Outlook, 24, 3, 1970, pp. 296–308Google Scholar; Westad, Odd Arne, The global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our times, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 67–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Engerman, David, ‘The Second World's Third World’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 12, 11, 2011, pp. 194196Google Scholar, 200–2; el-Khawas, Mohamed, ‘Africa, China and the United Nations’, African Review, 2, 2, 1972, pp. 277287Google Scholar.

12 Lipsey, Roger, Hammarskjöld: a life, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2013, pp. 373–380CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Nicholas Guilhot, ‘Imperial realism: post-war IR theory and decolonisation’, International History Review, 2013, doi:10.1080/07075332.2013.836122, p. 5.

14 Hasan, Mushirul, ‘Partition narratives’, in David Page et al., The partition omnibus, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002Google Scholar, p. xii. There is an immense literature on the Partition of India. An excellent recent study is Khan, Yasmin, The great partition: the making of India and Pakistan, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008Google Scholar.

15 Guha, Ramachandra, India after Gandhi: the history of the world's largest democracy, New York: HarperCollins, 2007, pp. 176178Google Scholar.

16 Talbot, Ian, India & Pakistan, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 54Google Scholar.

17 Armajani, Jon, Modern Islamist movements: history, religion and politics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 167–168Google Scholar; Hossain, Ishtiaq and Siddiquee, Noore Alam, ‘Islam in Bangladeshi politics: the role of Ghulam Azam of Jamaat-i Islami’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5, 3, 2006, p. 387Google Scholar.

18 Cohen, Stephen P., The idea of Pakistan, Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2004, p. 30Google Scholar.

19 Sharma, Jai Narain, The political thought of M.A. Jinnah, New Delhi: Concept, 2008, pp. 73–75Google Scholar.

20 Talbot, , India & Pakistan, p. 86Google Scholar.

21 Muhammad Ali Jinnah, quoted in Haider, Ziad, The ideological struggle for Pakistan, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2010, p. 5Google Scholar.

22 Formichi, Chiara, Islam and the making of the nation, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horikoshi, Hiroko, ‘The Dar ul-Islam movement in West Java: an experience in the historical process’, Indonesia, 20, 1975, p. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fealy, Greg, ‘Half a century of violent jihad in Indonesia: a historical and ideological comparison of Darul Islam and Jema'ah Islamiyah’, in Marika Viciany and David Wright-Neville, eds., Islamic terrorism in Indonesia: myths and realities, Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2005Google Scholar, p. 22.

23 Beittinger-Lee, Verena, (Un)civil society and political change in Indonesia: a contested arena, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 199200Google Scholar.

24 Fanon, Frantz, The wretched of the earth, New York: Grove Press, 2004, p. 54Google Scholar.

25 British Library, India Office Records (henceforth IOR), L/E/9/1378, 180/1(5), ‘Description of the meeting of Commonwealth nations prior to going to San Francisco’.

26 IOR, L/E/9/1378, 180/1(5), ‘Brief for the Indian delegation to the London conference on world security’; IOR, L/E/9/1378, 180/1(5), Tompkins to Peel, 13 March 1945; Hansard, 15 March 1945.

27 IOR, L/E/9/1378, 180/1(5), Report of the Indian delegation on the UN conference at San Francisco, p. 15.

28 Menon, K. P. S., Many worlds: an autobiography, London: Oxford, 1965, pp. 218–219Google Scholar; Report of the Indian delegation, pp. 26, 36.

29 New York Times, 29 April, 1945.

30 Schlesinger, Stephen C., Act of creation: the founding of the United Nations, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003, p. 127Google Scholar.

31 The National Archives, Kew (henceforth TNA), Cabinet Papers 66/33/31, ‘The United Nations plan’, p. 2, emphasis added.

32 Bosco, David, Five to rule them all: the UN Security Council and the making of the modern world, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 3031Google Scholar; Schlesinger, , Act of creation, pp. 193194Google Scholar.

33 Toye, Richard, Churchill's empire: the world that made him and the world he made, London: Macmillan, 2010, pp. 252–253Google Scholar. For an overview of the UN Trusteeship system, see Wilde, Ralph, ‘Trusteeship council’, in Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws, eds., The Oxford handbook on the United Nations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 149–159Google Scholar.

34 IOR, L/E/9/1408, 180/10(1), ‘Second session of the preparatory committee on trade and employment: British Commonwealth talks [Palais des Nations, Geneva]’, 12 May 1947; IOR, L/E/9/1408, 180/10(1), S. D. Listowel (Burma Office) to H. E. Rance (Governor of Burma), [25 July 1947, Burma no. 53].

35 Charter of the United Nations, Preamble and Chapter II, Article 4.1.

36 Report of the Indian delegation, p. 11.

37 Burke, Roland, Decolonization and the evolution of international human rights, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, pp. 69Google Scholar, 14–15; Lee, , ‘Introduction’, p. 15Google Scholar; Westad, , Global Cold War, pp. 97103Google Scholar; and Bhagavan, India.

38 United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Interview with General Carlos P. Romulo, 30 October 1982, p. 11, http://www.unmultimedia.org/oralhistory/ (consulted 20 May 2013), emphasis added.

39 Mackenzie, Archie, Faith in diplomacy: a memoir, London: Grosvenor Books, 2002, pp. 53–55Google Scholar.

40 Interview with General Romulo, p. 8.

41 Time, 8 December 1947; Romulo, Carlos, I walked with heroes: the autobiography of General Carlos P. Romulo, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961, pp. 285–288Google Scholar; Meyer, Milton Walter, A diplomatic history of the Philippine Republic: the first years, 1946–1961, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 1965, p. 74Google Scholar.

42 Simpson, Brad, ‘The United States and the curious history of self-determination’, Diplomatic History, 36, 4, 2012, pp. 678679CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borgwardt, Elizabeth, A New Deal for the world: America's vision for human rights, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005, pp. 23–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 28–9.

43 Crawford, Neta C., ‘Decolonization through trusteeship: the legacy of Ralph Bunche’, in Robert A. Hill and Edmond J. Keller, eds., Trustee for the human community: Ralph J. Bunche, the United Nations, and the decolonization of Africa, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010Google Scholar, pp. 98, 102–3.

44 Bhagavan, , India, pp. 2432Google Scholar, 42.

45 Report of the Indian delegation, pp. 22–3.

46 IOR, L/E/9/1414, 180/14(a), ‘Brief for the 4th session of ECOSOC’, 28 February 1947.

47 IOR, L/E/9/1376, 180/1(3), Secretary of State to Viceroy of India, 17 January 1946; IOR, L/E/9/1376, 180/1(3), Telegram, H. A. F. Rumbold to Richard Turnbull.

48 IOR, L/E/9/1414, 180/14(a), copy, Foreign Office to UK Delegation, UN, 22 February 1947, emphasis added.

49 IOR, L/E/9/1483, 180/67, Circular Telegram from the UK delegation to the Foreign Office and Dominions, 21 October 1946.

50 Gharekhan, Chinmaya R., ‘India and the United Nations’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta, eds., Indian foreign policy: challenges and opportunities, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, pp. 196–197Google Scholar.

51 For instance, United Nations S/1188, ‘Report to the president of the Security Council concerning the credentials of the representative of India to the Security Council’, 6 January 1949. See also Hilali, A. Z., ‘Kashmir dispute and UN mediation efforts: an historical perspective’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 8, 2, 1997, pp. 6972CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 74–5.

52 IOR, L/E/9/1483, 180/67, Government of India to Secretary of State for India, 9 October 1946; IOR, L/E/9/1483, 180/67, copy, Foreign Office to UK delegation, UN, 24 October 1946.

53 On the discursive history of ‘civilization’ as a defence for imperialism, see Bowden, Brett, The empire of civilization: the evolution of an imperial idea, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Colonial Office International Relations Department, ‘The colonial empire today: summary of our main problems and policies’, CO 537/5698, in Ronald Hyam, ed., British documents on the end of empire: the Labour government and the end of empire, 1945–1951, London: HMSO for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, vol. 1, p. 356, document 72, paragraph 80.

55 Ibid., p. 356, paragraph 81.

56 IOR/L/E/9/1391, 180/6(1), Sir Alexander Cadogan, United Kingdom Delegation to United Nations to the Foreign Office, No. 545, 5 July 1946.

57 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘On India's foreign policy’, press conference, 27 September 1946, in Nehru, Jawaharlal, The first sixty years, vol. II, New York: The John Day Company, 1965, p. 267Google Scholar.

58 IOR, L/E/9/1454, 180/41, B. R. Curson to P. H. Gore Booth (Foreign Office), 27 August 1946; IOR, L/E/9/1454, 180/41, Sd. S. Sen (Indian Liaison Officer) to L. A. C. Fry (Deputy Secretary, External Affairs Department, Government of India), 18 September 1946.

59 IOR, L/E/9/1454, 180/41, S. Sen to Trygve Lie, 21 July 1947; IOR, L/E/9/1454, 180/41, A. C. B. Symon (Deputy High Commissioner for the UK in India) to Secretary of the British Cabinet, despatch no. 74, 2 July 1947.

60 IOR, L/E/9/1417, 180/16, Jawaharlal Nehru to Trygve Lie, 8 January 1947.

61 IOR, L/E/9/1440, 180/33, Mudaliar to UN Secretary-General, 4 July 1946; IOR, L/E/9/1440, 180/33, Assistant Secretary-General of UN to External Affairs Department of India, 9 January 1947; IOR, L/E/9/1435, 180/29, Department of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations (India) to Secretary-General of UN, 28 July 1947; IOR, L/E/9/1435, 180/29, Memorandum, Helen Tang (UN Department of Public Information), 27 November 1946.

62 Christian Science Monitor, 14 February 1946.

63 Times of India, 3 May 2007.

64 McGarr, Paul M., ‘“A serious menace to society”: British intelligence, V. K. Krishna Menon and the Indian High Commission in London, 1947–52’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38, 3, 2010, pp. 443CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 447–8; Andrew, Christopher, The defence of the realm: the authorized history of MI5, London: Penguin, 2009, p. 443Google Scholar.

65 IOR, L/E/9/1396, B. R. Curson to R. M. A. Hankey, Foreign Office, 28 November 1946.

66 Menon, Krishna, ‘Statement in the general debate at the General Assembly on 8 October 1957’, in E. S. Reddy and A. K. Damodaran, eds., Krishna Menon at the United Nations: India and the world, New Delhi: Krishna Menon National Memorial Committee, 1990, p. 149Google Scholar.

67 Ramaswamy Venkataraman, ‘Foreword’, in Reddy and Damodaran, Krishna Menon, p. xii; Brown, Judith, Nehru: a political life, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 248Google Scholar.

68 McGarr, Paul M., ‘“India's Rasputin”?: V. K. Krishna Menon and Anglo-American misperceptions of Indian foreign policymaking, 1947–1964’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 22, 2, 2011, pp. 241242CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Venkataraman, ‘Foreword’, p. xiii.

70 Chaudhuri, Rudra, Forged in crisis: India and the United States since 1947, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 70–7; Zachariah, Benjamin, Nehru, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 201–203Google Scholar.

71 United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Interview with Arthur Lall, 27 June, 1990, pp. 8–11, 13–16, http://www.unmultimedia.org/oralhistory/ (consulted 20 March 2014); McCann, Gerard, ‘From diaspora to Third Worldism and the United Nations: India and the politics of decolonizing Africa’, Past & Present, 218, supplement 8, 2013, pp. 276–277CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Henshaw, Peter, ‘Britain, the United Nations, and the “South African disputes”, 1946–1961’, in Ronald Hyam and Peter Henshaw, The lion and the springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 146–167Google Scholar; Lloyd, Lorna, ‘“A family quarrel”: the development of the dispute over Indians in South Africa’, Historical Journal, 34, 3, 1991, pp. 703–725CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazower, Mark, No enchanted palace: the end of empire and the ideological origins of the United Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 171–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 IOR, L/E/9/1393, 180/7(1), B. R. Curson, Circular note, India Office, September 1946.

74 IOR, L/E/9/1393, 180/7(1), Nehru to Indian UN delegation, 28 September 1947.

75 Nehru to Chief Ministers, 14 May 1949, in Parthasarathi, G., ed., Letters to chief ministers, vol. I, 1947–1949, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1985, pp. 346–347Google Scholar.

76 Dutt, Subimal, ‘With Nehru in the Foreign Office’, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977, p. 8Google Scholar; Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, The scope of happiness: a personal memoir, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 210Google Scholar.

77 Jawaharlal Nehru, Note to Foreign Secretary, 28 October 1946, in Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. I, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1984, pp. 458–9; IOR, L/E/9/1398, 180/5(2), Administrative and Finance Service of UN to Nehru, 8 April 1947 and 12 June 1947. On debates over the UN's location, see Mires, Charlene, Capital of the world: the race to host the United Nations, New York: New York University Press, 2013Google Scholar.

78 French, David, The British way in counter-insurgency, 1945–1967, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012Google Scholar; Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin, Imperial endgame: Britain's dirty wars and the end of empire, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, David, Histories of the hanged: Britain's dirty war in Kenya and the end of empire, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005Google Scholar; Elkins, Caroline, Britain's gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya, London: Jonathan Cape, 2005Google Scholar.

79 DOHP 18, Interview transcript, Sir Mervyn Brown, 24 Oct. 1996, p. 7, https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Brown.pdf (consulted 20 June 2013).

80 Mazower, , No enchanted palace, pp. 185188Google Scholar and ch. 4 passim.

81 Ibid., p. 5.

82 Quane, Helen, ‘The United Nations and the evolving right to self-determination’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 47, 3, 1998, p. 572CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 TNA, Colonial Office 537/2057, John Bennett, ‘International aspects of colonial policy, 1947’; Hyam, Ronald, Understanding the British empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 282–284CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 293 n. 59; Pruden, Caroline, Conditional partners: Eisenhower, the United Nations, and the search for a permanent peace, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1998, pp. 181–182Google Scholar.

84 Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly at its 10th session, A/RES/995X, ‘Admission of new members to the United Nations’; ‘Growth in United Nations membership, 1945–present’, http://www.un.org/en/members/growth.shtml#1960; Pruden, Conditional partners, pp. 189–92.

85 IOR, L/E/9/1390, 180/6, Hugh McKinnon Wood, Memorandum, 1946. On the League and interwar internationalism, see Arsan, Andrew, Lewis, Su Lin, and Richard, Anne-Isabelle, eds., Journal of Global History, 7, 2, 2012Google Scholar.

86 Wong, Laura Elizabeth, ‘Relocating East and West: UNESCO's major project on the mutual appreciation of Eastern and Western cultural values’, Journal of World History, 19, 3, 2008, pp. 349374CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorn, Charles and Ghodsee, Kirsten, ‘The Cold War politicization of literacy: communism, UNESCO, and the World Bank’, Diplomatic History, 36, 2, 2012, pp. 373–398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Arnold Toynbee, transcript, ‘The world and the West’, Reith Lectures, 1952, Lecture 3: ‘India’, transmission 30 November 1952, BBC Home Service, p. 3, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1952_reith3.pdf (consulted 20 May 2013); Michael Lang, ‘Globalization and global history in Toynbee’, Journal of World History, 22, 4, 2011, p. 780; Connelly, Matthew, ‘Seeing beyond the state: the population control movement and the problem of sovereignty’, Past & Present, 193, 1, 2006, pp. 217219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Indivar Kamtekar, ‘A different war dance: state and class in India 1939–1945’, Past & Present, 176, 1, 2002, 211, pp. 214–15.

89 Chaudhuri, , Forged in crisis, p. 37Google Scholar.

90 Nehru, Letter to Chief Ministers, 19 December 1947, in Parthasarathi, Letters to chief ministers, pp. 38–9; Chaudhuri, , Forged in crisis, pp. 3638Google Scholar, 44, 65–8.

91 Hodge, Joseph, ‘Colonial experts, developmental and environmental doctrines, and the legacies of late British colonialism’, in Christina Folke Ax et al., eds., Cultivating the colonies: colonial states and their environmental legacies, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011, pp. 302303Google Scholar, 305–7, 309, 312–13; Kothari, Uma, ‘Spatial practices & imaginaries: experiences of colonial officers & development professionals’, in Mark Duffield and Vernon Hewitt, eds., Empire, development & colonialism, Woodbridge: James Currey, 2009, pp. 170173Google Scholar.

92 Toynbee, , ‘India’, p. 6Google Scholar.

93 Bashford, Alison, ‘Population, geopolitics, and international organizations in the mid twentieth century’, Journal of World History, 19, 3, 2008, pp. 333334Google Scholar, 347; Connelly, , Fatal misconception: the struggle to control world population, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010Google Scholar, esp. ch. 6.

94 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, Limits to growth, New York: New American Library, 1972; Mazower, Governing the world, pp. 292–4.

95 Cited in Mackenzie, , Faith in diplomacy, p. 44Google Scholar.

96 Helleiner, Eric, ‘The development mandate of international institutions: where did it come from?’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 44, 3, 2009, pp. 189–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alacevich, Michele, ‘The World Bank and the politics of productivity: the debate on economic growth, poverty, and living standards in the 1950s’, Journal of Global History, 6, 1, 2011, pp. 5374CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jachertz, Ruth and Nützenadel, Alexander, ‘Coping with hunger? Visions of a global food system, 1930–1960’, Journal of Global History, 6, 1, 2011, pp. 112–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Staples, Amy, The birth of development: how the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization changed the world, 1945–1965, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 6.

97 The Oral History Interview of I. G. Patel, 9 March 2001, in The complete oral history transcripts from UN voices, CD-ROM, New York: United Nations Intellectual History Project, 2007, pp. 7–8; Nehru, ‘Instructions to Indian Delegates at the Economic and Social Conference’, 12 February 1947 in Nehru, Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. II, pp. 486–7.

98 Interview with Mervyn Brown, p. 6.

99 Ibid.

100 See Butler, L. J. and Stockwell, Sarah, eds., The wind of change: Harold Macmillan and British decolonization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Marjory Perham, transcript, ‘The colonial reckoning’, Reith Lectures, 1961, Lecture 1: ‘Anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism’, transmission 16 November 1961, BBC Home Service, pp. 1, 2, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1961_reith1.pdf (consulted 15 May 2013).

102 George Kennan, transcript, ‘Russia, the atom and the West’, Reith Lectures, 1957, Lecture 5: ‘The non-European world’, transmission 8 December 1957, BBC Home Service, p. 5, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1957_reith5.pdf (consulted 16 May 2013).

103 The Oral History Interview of Brian Urquhart (6 January 2000), in UN voices, p. 13.