The Wilsonian Moment Summary

World War I (WWI) changed the world forever. It brought the destruction of empires, the deaths of millions of people, the introduction of new weapons to wage war with, and created a desire for political independence amongst people in colonial nations. These desires resulted in movements across many of the Great Powers’ colonies after WWI. In The Wilsonian Moment, Erez Manela argues that President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric on self-determination created an opportunity for people under colonial occupation to seek their political freedom, and that the anticolonial movements that occurred after WWI were a response to this opportunity diminishing.
Manela claims that a “Wilsonian moment” began when Wilson’s vision for the postwar world spread with

the help of propaganda. As WWI was coming to a close, Wilson gave speeches on his hopes for the postwar world. Wilson called for all nations to have the same rights no matter what their size was, a League of Nations that would resolve international disputes and make laws that every country would have to abide by, and, most significantly, advocated for self-determination amongst all people. Wilson borrowed the term self-determination from Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Lenin had used the term to try and instill a national identity within Russians. Wilson, however, “used it in a more general, vaguer sense and usually equated the term with popular sovereignty, conjuring an international order based on democratic forms of government” (42). Wilson also believed that propaganda would be an important component of the war because it had the power to destroy old ways of thinking and create new ones. He created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) in 1917 to help with the United States’ propaganda efforts during WWI. The CPI helped spread Wilson’s speeches by reprinting them in the United States and translating them to be distributed around the world. By the time the armistice was signed, people all over the world had heard, or read, Wilson’s post-war plans. More importantly, however, the idea of self-determination was now in people’s minds.
In hearing Wilson’s call for self-determination, Manela believes that nationalists around the world began to infuse his rhetoric in their objectives, and even saw him as a prophet that would bring about their national freedom. In British occupied Egypt, nationalists like Wafd party leader Sa’d Zaghlul believed that, “Wilson’s principle of self-determination prohibited the imposition of foreign rule on a people against its will, and Britain could therefore no longer claim legitimacy for its rule over Egypt” (70). In Korea, which was under Japanese rule, a Korean Declaration of Independence was created that advocated for freedom from Japan and wanted equality in international affairs. In India, many people hoped their war contributions to the British Empire would be rewarded with home-rule. In response to this desire, British Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu declared that he would endorse Indians being allowed in the government. When viewed alongside Wilson’s call for self-determination, however, this was inadequate. With Wilson’s plans in mind, “Indian home-rule campaigners incorporated his principles into their rhetorical arsenal as they redefined their own goals and adjusted their expectations and demands to keep pace with the transformation they perceived in the international arena” (91). Finally, nationalists in China, who wanted to see their country’s status amongst the world’s nations increase, began to see Wilson’s ideals as being in line with the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Kang Youwei, a reform leader, even saw Wilson’s plan for the League of Nations as being in line with the, “Confucian notion of datong, a utopian vision of universal peace” (108). The Wilsonian moment thus created the desire for political freedom, and Wilson was seen as its harbinger.
Manela concludes his work by arguing that when the Wilsonian moment ended, the colonial world responded with numerous movements in the years after WWI.

As frameworks for the peace treaty became public, it was clear the leaders at the Paris Peace Conference would not grant the colonies self-determination. But that did not mean people in the colonies no longer wanted their political freedom. Manela states, “the period between 1917 and 1920 saw a sharp escalation or realignment of institutions and individuals that would play central roles in subsequent anticolonial struggles” (9). In Egypt, the imprisonment of Zaghlul led to the 1919 Revolution in March, which Egyptians of all classes participated in. Zaghlul was later released and led a delegation to the peace conference to bring Wilson’s attention to the Revolution and Egyptians’ desire for self-determination. Mahatma Gandhi advocated for nonviolent demonstrations in India in the years following WWI. Eventually, Gandhi became the leader of the Indian National Congress, which fought for India’s right to home-rule until it was finally granted in 1947. Mao Zedong, after participating in the May Fourth protests in China, felt like Wilsonian principles had failed the people of China and began to believe in the Bolshevist ideology from Russia. He would later lead the Chinese Communist Party to power after World War II. And in Korea, the March First movement, and movements amongst Koreans worldwide, were an attempt to try and get Wilson’s attention to their call for independence from Japan. Like Mao in China, Koreans would turn to Bolshevism in the years after WWI in the wake of Wilson’s failed vision. The Wilsonian moment might have failed, but it changed the way colonized people saw their relationship with their colonial power

forever.
The Wilsonian Moment is a detailed account of how colonial uprisings began after WWI, and how nationalists adopted the ideal of self-determination. Manela clearly shows that Wilson’s views on self-determination appealed to nationalists around the world, and it opened a window of opportunity for them to seek their own political autonomy. The Wilsonian moment was international because it occurred all over the world, but more importantly it was transnational because many countries had similar experiences. Manela’s argument could have been enhanced, however, if he could have shown that a French colony had similar experiences. France was the second largest colonial empire at the time, and including one of its colonies would have shown that it was not just British colonies, or countries where Japan exerted its influence, that heard Wilson’s call for self-determination and acted on it. With not including a French colony aside, Manela’s work is an important one in understanding why anti-colonial uprisings broke out after WWI.