This article tells a legal and intellectual history of oil and decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s through the projects of international institutions including the UN Permanent Sovereignty Commission and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the work of anti-colonial lawyers Hasan Zakariya and Nicolas Sarkis. It examines the ideas and infrastructure of decolonization as they related to the question of how international law could be used to win economic sovereignty.
Christopher Dietrich
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Ph.D. Candidate Nicholas J. DeAntonis just published an article, “The Transnational Fight to End the Saudi Arabian Slave Trade: The British Anti‐Slavery Society, the African American Press, and the American Jewish Congress, 1953‐1960” in Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research.
Below is the article abstract:
This article examines the transnational efforts of the British Anti‐Slavery Society to end the Saudi Arabian slave trade, highlighting the liveliness of human rights activism throughout the 1950s. The Society’s abolitionist efforts both succeeded and failed at the UN’s Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery in 1956. The Society failed to pass effective enforcement to end the slave trade, due to the growing concern for sovereignty amid decolonization throughout the Global South. Ironically, as decolonization spread, the Society’s abolitionist efforts were hampered. The Society’s own government avoided assisting them, fearing the imperialist perception of such actions. Nonetheless, the Supplementary Convention internationalized the cause and produced essential allies across the Atlantic: the African American press and American Jewish Congress. In the ensuing years, these journalists and activists denounced the burgeoning US–Saudi alliance and assured the continuity of the abolitionist message in the United States and globally. Although it is beyond the scope of this article, significant evidence exists that this new critical coalition helped shape human rights policy in the Kennedy administration.
Peace & Change publishes scholarly and interpretive articles on the achievement of a peaceful, just, and humane society. International and interdisciplinary in focus, the journal bridges the gap between peace researchers, educators, and activists. It publishes articles on a wide range of peace-related topics, including peace movements and activism, conflict resolution, nonviolence, internationalism, race and gender issues, cross-cultural studies, economic development, the legacy of imperialism, and the post-Cold War upheaval.
Nicholas J. DeAntonis
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