This book explains how leaders in the Caribbean and Pacific regions balance the autonomy-viability dilemma of postcolonial statehood - that political self-determination is a hollow achievement unless it is accompanied by economic development - by practising statehood à la carte. Previous research has focused on the pursuit of decolonial self-determination through and above the nation state, via regionalism and internationalism, or by creating non-sovereign alternatives to it. This book looks at how communities have sought the same goals below the state, including via secession and devolution. Downsizing is typically portrayed as the antithesis of progressive, cosmopolitan internationalism and employed as evidence for the claim that the age of anticolonial self-determination has ended. In this book, Jack Corbett shows how these movements are animated by similar ideas and motivations that are rendered viable by the simultaneous pursuit of regional integration and forms of non-sovereignty. He argues that the à la carte pursuit of political and economic independence through, above, and below the state, and via non-sovereign alternatives to it, is a pragmatic response to the contradictions inherent to coloniality.

This book explains how leaders in the Caribbean and Pacific regions balance the autonomy-viability dilemma of postcolonial statehood by practising statehood à la carte. Jack Corbett shows that this approach is a pragmatic response to the contradictions inherent to coloniality.

This book explains how leaders in the Caribbean and Pacific regions balance the autonomy-viability dilemma of postcolonial statehood by practising statehood à la carte. Jack Corbett shows that this approach is a pragmatic response to the contradictions inherent to coloniality.

The international community has donated nearly one trillion dollars during the last four decades to reconstruct post-conflict countries and prevent the outbreak of more civil war. Yet reconstruction has eluded many of these countries, and 1.9 million people have been killed in reignited conflict. Where did the money go? This book documents how some leaders do bring about remarkable reconstruction of their countries using foreign aid, but many other post-conflict leaders fail to do so. Offering a global argument that is the first of its kind, Desha Girod explains that post-conflict leaders are more likely to invest aid in reconstruction when they are desperate for income and thus depend on aid that comes with reconstruction strings attached. Leaders are desperate for income when they lack access to rents from natural resources or to aid from donors with strategic interests in the country. Using data on civil wars that ended between 1970 and 2009 and evidence both from countries that succeeded and from countries that failed at post-conflict reconstruction, Girod carefully examines the argument from different perspectives and finds support for it. The findings are important for theory and policy because they explain why only some leaders have the political will to meet donor goals in the wake of civil war. The findings also shed light on state-building processes and on the political economy of postconflict countries. Paradoxically, donors are most likely to achieve reconstruction goals in countries where they have the least at stake.

Pierre Clément de Laussat was the last representative of a foreign power to exercise authority in Louisiana. Appointed colonial prefect by Napoleon Bonaparte, Laussat departed for Louisiana in January 1803 to preside over the formal retrocession of the colony from Spain to France, only to have his mission altered entirely by the Louisiana Purchase on April 30, 1803. These memoirs, covering the period from January 1803 to July 1804, provide a unique firsthand perspective on the momentous transaction that doubled the size of the United States. Laussat pens very personal observations on Louisiana's people and customs, Spanish and American officials with whom he had frequent contact, the local physical environment and economic system, and the formalities involved with the transfer of the colony to the United States. Memoirs of My Life furnishes rare insights into culture, politics, and everyday life in early-nineteenth-century Louisiana.

This book is a comprehensive examination into the shifting international thought of Alfred Zimmern, a Grecophile intellectual, one of the most prominent liberal internationalists and the world’s first professor of IR. Identifying the writings of Burke and cultural Zionism as two important ideological sources that defined his project for empire and global order, this book argues that Zimmern can best be understood as an apostle of Commonwealth. It shows that while his proposals changed from cosmopolitan democracy to Euro-Atlanticism and to world federal government, they were constantly shaped by the organizing principles of a professedly universal British Commonwealth. It was the empire transhistorically chained to classical Athens.