Underdogs End Empires : A Memoir

In international relations discussions, the voice of the underdog is now hardly ever heard. There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when it was. The success of freedom struggles had spread across the nations of Africa and Asia during those years. The recent achievement of independence brought self-confidence to their leaders and people; they had their own innovative ideas about IR: just what the subject should be about; the most appropriate worldview in which it should be framed; how best to study it; and the most interesting ways to report on it. There was new thinking about the nature of colonialism and what the anti-colonial struggles had been about; the Cold War; and the worldview portrayed by standard schools of IR. So the voice and presence on the international stage of the smaller nations became far more significant. It was these nations that had won the struggle against the bigger imperial powers; for them freedom was not the result of imperial rivalry; nor was it a gift, the product of their erstwhile rulers\' generosity; it was forcefully wrested from them, often the outcome of a protracted war of independence. The underdog had brought an end to empire.