Lydia Walker, “States-in-Waiting: A Counternarrative of Global Decolonization”

The Carolina Asia Center is co-sponsoring a talk with the Center for European Studies, History Department, Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense, the Carolina Seminar on Decolonization, and the Carolina Seminar on Transnational and Global History.

We are pleased to welcome Prof. Lydia Walker of Ohio State University. She is a historian of 20th century global decolonization. She has broad interests in the international history of South Asia, Southern Africa, military intervention, and insurgent resistance.

After the Second World War, national self-determination became a recognized international norm, yet it only extended to former colonies. Groups within postcolonial states that made alternative sovereign claims were disregarded or actively suppressed. Foregrounding little-known regions in South Asia and Southern Africa and the networks that connected them to global politics, Prof. Walker’s book States-in-Waiting: A Counternarrative of Global Decolonization (Cambridge, 2024), illuminates the un-endings of decolonization — the unfinished and improvised ways that the state-centric international system replaced empire, which left certain claims of sovereignty perpetually awaiting recognition.

Parking is available for $1 after 5pm in the McCauley Deck under the FedEx Global Education building. A catered reception will follow the talk.