“Sovereignty” in a Time of Decolonization, 1945-1955

• In Event: Empire, Nation, and Sovereignty: New Theoretical Approaches to Vietnamese Political History

Abstract

This paper examines contestations over sovereignty in the transition from colonial to post-colonial rule in southern Vietnam (1945-1955). It contests with the usual definition of sovereignty as referring to the supreme political authority in the land whose power is delimited by clearly demarcated borders, and whose transfer occurs at specific moment in time. Instead, the paper argues that Vietnam’s sovereignty transition spread out over ten years. The process was messy and graduated, and multiple actors made de facto claims to sovereignty in political units that fragmented, reformed, and fragmented again. The paper pays particular attention to contestations over sovereignty in the Mekong delta.

This paper critically engages with insights of scholars in philosophy (Agamben), history (Benton; van Schendel; Tagliacozzo, Goscha) and anthropology (Hansen and Stepputat) on sovereignty. The paper argues for the significance of what Zamindar, in the case of India and Pakistan, has called “the long partition.” In the case of Vietnam, this refers to the long process that followed the formal splitting up of the colonial entity of Indochina into its post-colonial parts from 1949 onwards. The paper also approaches sovereignty not simply in terms of a state’s international legal and political claims, but from the bottom up as well. It underlines the importance of seeing sovereignty as a practice in particular spaces or areas where sovereignty is fragmented among multiple local actors.

Author

• Shawn McHale, George Washington University