The Declaration of Independence and the Origins of Self-Determination in the Modern World

It is unlikely that Thomas Jefferson imagined the principles and ideals he laid down in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence would reverberate throughout the world for centuries to come. Yet, from Liberia to India, from New Zealand to Vietnam, the notion that a people can cut the ties to those who rule them and form their own independent nation has been a driving force in world history. Each circumstance has been different, of course, but the stated goals in these diverse histories remain the same: to “dissolve old political bonds . . . and assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station” of nationhood. The essays in this issue explore the successes and failures of several of these efforts and the difficulty all share in defining who, exactly, are “the people” who will participate in creating a new, independent nation.

Historian David Armitage begins the issue with his essay, “The Declaration of Independence and the Origins of Modern Self-Determination.” Armitage describes how novel—and even shocking—the decision of the mainland colonies to secede from the British empire was in 1776. Even today, despite multiple examples of independence movements, he reminds us that there is still no universally acknowledged right to self-determination. Existing rulers still prove themselves ready to prevent the success of independence and often act to crush it through force of arms, just as Britain did in the American Revolution. Modern movements for independence may employ a language unknown to Jefferson and his colleagues, Armitage points out, but Jefferson’s declaration can still be read as a defense of the rights of peoples across the world to self-determination.

In his essay, “Venezuela’s First Declaration of Independence and US Republicanism: Convergences and Divergences,” Vitor Izecksohn traces Venezuelan history from the late eighteenth century, when local elites grew rich from the labor of enslaved people in a racially stratified society, to the twenty-first century, when independence from Spain was declared on July 5, 1811. Although the elites who drafted this Acta de la independencia borrowed much from Thomas Jefferson’s declaration, they did not offer an ideal of equality to all the people of the new country. Descendants of Indigenous conquered people and of enslaved people, a vast majority of Venezuelans, were excluded from its promise. Religious freedom was also absent since the new independent government imposed an official religion, Roman Catholicism. But all did not go as the elite leadership planned. Their lack of experience in government and the decision of many provinces to declare their own sovereignty prevented the emergence of unity that was achieved in the United States. The result was a tragic civil war that ravaged the country. As Izecksohn concludes, “the route to constitutional government would involve long and troublesome processes of national definition and bloody transformations affecting whole populations.”

In “New Zealand’s Declaration of Independence,” Paul Moon describes an effort at independence that failed. The declaration was put forward by the small British settler population whose goals were first, to bring about peace between warring Maori tribes, and second, to protect New Zealand from seizure by the French by creating a unified front against French aggression. In theory, the declaration gave the Confederation of United Tribes of New Zealand extensive power and authority as the country’s sole law-making institution, but this confederation never actually functioned. Within two years, some confederation members were once again at war with one another. The British ignored the declaration, with one official denouncing it as a “silly as well as an unauthorized act,” and by 1839, the British government had actively stepped in, appointing a British consul and negotiating a formal treaty with the Maori chiefs.

Claude A. Clegg III also focuses on a settler population’s role in promoting self-determination. In his essay, “From Colony to Nation: Liberian Independence and Black Self-Government in the Atlantic World,” Clegg shows us the effort by a Black American settler class to rule over a territory largely populated by Indigenous Africans. Liberia had begun as an experiment by the American Colonization Society to send Black Americans to Africa. This colonization effort was enthusiastically supported by the US government under President James Monroe. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, the ACS retained ultimate authority over the colony because its founders doubted that Black men could govern themselves. But by the 1840s, pressure from European nations moving into Africa prompted the ACS to encourage the American Black settlers to declare independence. The declaration of independence that resulted on July 26, 1847, raised a number of questions it ignored or failed to answer, among them who was or could become a citizen. Although the authors of the declaration spoke of themselves as the representatives of the people, a group of prosperous male settlers actually held power. They saw themselves as the bearers of Western civilization and Christian belief to the Indigenous people. Although Liberian independence did bring about a version of Black self-rule, it was built upon settler colonialism, not “the People” writ large.

Ishita Banerjee-Dube helps us understand the Indian movement for independence in her essay, “Insurgent India: Purna Swaraj as Self-Determination.” On August 14, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of a “Tryst with Destiny” as Indian independence would soon become a reality. But the struggle for that independence began two decades earlier when the Indian National Congress made Purna Swaraj, complete independence, the goal of its nationalist struggle. Their resolution, adopted on December 19, 1929, went far beyond an even earlier demand for dominion status within the British commonwealth. The independence it proclaimed would be achieved by the principles and practice of non-violence. But it was not until January 26, 1950, that Indian leaders were able to formally implement the Constitution of the “sovereign, socialist, democratic republic” of India. This ended a long history of European dominance in the country, most prominently by the English East India Trading Company in the eighteenth century and by the Crown itself in the nineteenth century when, in 1858, Queen Victoria brought India under direct British rule. By the twentieth century, however, anti-colonial struggles had spread, and India joined other nations in demanding, and achieving, self-determination.

Historian Thuy Vo Dang narrates the struggle for nationhood in Vietnam in “The Will to be Free: On the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” After thousands of years of Chinese domination, and eighty years of colonization by the French, followed by five years of Japanese occupation during World War II, on September 2, 1945, Vietnam’s leader Hồ Chí Minh formally declared Vietnamese independence. The new nation’s declaration followed closely the wording of Jefferson’s, over two centuries before, asserting that all men are created equal and have unalienable rights. However, a unified Vietnam did not emerge until after a bloody war, sometimes viewed as a civil war between North and South, and sometimes viewed as a revolution against the American presence in Vietnam, ended. Vietnam’s resiliency as a nation, the author concludes, “is rooted in the people’s will to be free.”

In the case of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a declaration of independence did not proclaim equality for all, and the road to self-determination would be lengthy and arduous for the Africans of that nation. In “The Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe),” Eliakim Sibanda describes the declaration as “the most polarizing event” in the nation’s history. At issue was a division along racial lines, with the White minority declaring independence from Great Britain and African nationalists demanding equal rights. In 1961, the British had introduced a constitution for Southern Rhodesia designed to ultimately ensure African majority rule, but the White settler minority organized a political opposition to this. In 1964, extreme White supremacists took control of the government and persuaded the governor of Rhodesia to proclaim a state of emergency that would advance the White settler minority’s goal of a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, a declaration that did not grant the African majority equal rights. International disapproval followed, and for the next fifteen years nationalists and the White settler-led government were in conflict. Not until 1980 was full independence won by African nationalists.

This issue, like all earlier ones, provides supplementary materials from the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s archives, including further readings, videos, and key primary sources. The issue’s special feature is a presentation by David Armitage, “The Declaration of Independence: A Global History,” given on Zoom as an installment of the Institute’s Book Breaks series on July 4, 2021.

Nicole and I hope that this issue finds you safely back in the classroom. May you have a wonderful year with your students, and may History Now be a useful tool for bringing our past alive to the next generation.

Carol Berkin, Editor
Presidential Professor of History, Emerita, Baruch College & The Graduate Center, CUNY

Nicole Seary, Associate Editor, History Now, and Senior Editor, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History