Commissioned Book Review: Worldmaking after Empire by Adom Getachew
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920908701 |
| Author | Ramon Blanco |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) NP23 –NP24
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
908701PSW0010.1177/1478929920908701Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2020
Commissioned Book Review
Worldmaking after Empire by Adom
Getachew. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2019. 271 pp., £30.00. ISBN 978-0-691-
17915-5
Very few processes have the potential of funda-
mentally changing the way in which interna-
tional politics are understood. Decolonization
is definitely one of them. Therefore, a study
offering a significant reproblematization about
the manner in which one understands it is a
major contribution to the field. This is pre-
cisely what Adom Getachew successfully
accomplishes with her new book Worldmaking
after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-
Determination.
Usually, decolonization is understood basi-
cally as a nation-building enterprise. Consequently,
under this rationale, the anticolonial pursuit of
self-determination becomes a twofold process
that (a) on the one hand, seeks to reject the domi-
nation of a foreign political entity and (b) on the
other hand, culminates in the formation of new
sovereign nation-states. Decolonization, within
this framework, is a way of overcoming alien rule
and entering the international society.
Worldmaking after Empire brings a different
and enlightening perspective about it. Departing
from the political thoughts of anticolonial intel-
lectuals and statesmen – such as Nnamdi
Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore,
Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael
Manley, and Julius Nyerere – Adom Getachew
reproblematizes the role of decolonization in
international politics. She argues that framing
the decolonization process as the mere transition
from a world of colonial empires to an interna-
tional system of states downplays the radical
role that the decolonization imagination and
process had in offering a new world order per-
spective. Understanding the decolonization pro-
cess as a worldmaking process, as Getachew
does, brings light to an essential feature of inter-
national politics – it evinces the manner in
which empire might be understood not only as
alien rule but mainly as an international
structure that is racially hierarchical (p.15). This
certainly brings a more comprehensive under-
stating about it.
In order to advance her argument, Getachew
structures Worldmaking after Empire into five
chapters, in addition to an introduction and an
epilogue. In the first chapter, Getachew deline-
ates a political theory of decolonization and,
consequently, brings a very interesting reprob-
lematization about this process. As a conse-
quence, she discusses the elements of what
could be the pillars of a postcolonial cosmo-
politanism. Then, in chapter 2, the author ques-
tions the idea of self-determination as a
universal principle. In order to operationalize
her thought, Getachew delineates how she sees
the institutionalization of empire internation-
ally. She demonstrates a racially unequal inte-
gration in the League of the Nations, by
observing the cases of Ethiopia’s and Liberia’s
membership in the organization. She argues
that their inclusion, rather than protecting their
sovereignty, allowed their domination through
their very membership.
In chapter 3, Getachew moves the analysis
from the League of Nations to the United
Nations. The author interestingly examines
how anticolonial nationalists understood self-
determination as more than the mere inclusion
of newly independent states into an already
existing hierarchical order, which would occur
through the universalization of an already exist-
ing principle. On the contrary, she evinces that,
for anticolonial nationalists, self-determination
was understood as a way through which one
could pursue a distinct world order. Chapter 4,
through the thoughts of Kwame Nkrumah and
Eric Williams, brings to discussion two short-
lived federation projects in the West Indies and
Africa – the West Indian Federation and the
Union of African States. This is done in order to
evince that the federal enterprise was an ele-
ment of the anticolonial imagination in their
worldmaking enterprise. In chapter five,
Getachew discusses what she perceives as the
most ambitious worldmaking project – the New
International Economic Order (NIEO). This
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