"No apology necessary? How narratives impact redress for colonialism in Namibia and India" - by CWP alum Manjari Chatterjee Miller

Why do victim states not ask for redress from perpetrator states? Focusing on former extractive colonies, the vast majority of which, despite having suffered brutal colonial rule, have not asked for redress—apologies, reparations or restitution—from their former colonizers, this article argues that the content of historical narratives in the victim state matters for interstate redress. When meta and sub-narratives in victim states do not conform with each other, framing and consensus mobilization on interstate redress is stymied. To show this, I code interstate redress in the Correlates of War data set of colony/colonizer states, and then use primary sources—interviews and school textbooks—to examine two victim states: Namibia, a ‘less likely’ case which has sought interstate redress, and India, a ‘more likely’ case which has not. Academic and policy conversations on interstate redress have thus far largely focused on perpetrator states. This not only denies victim states, most of which are developing countries, agency but skews our understanding of the phenomenon of seeking justice across international borders.

Manjari Chatterjee Miller International Affairs, iiad118, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad118

Published: 19 June 2023

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021, shortlisted for the 2022 Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a monthly columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.

Photo Credit: By fr:Utilisateur:Georgio - fr:Image:Tintenpalast-Windhoek.jpg (+ a little more green), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4771868