well-being effect production but also it stood to boost the metropolitan economy. Certain progressive administrators such as Albert Sarraut believed that Algerian workers would work harder if they were granted some measures of protection, but his was not a widely held position in the 1930s. Not all men in power at the time envisioned benefits from what would have been a significantly different policy approach.
Reluctance to standardize health and labor conditions in the colonies changed after World War II. Empires presented both a challenge and a solution to the crisis of capitalism. On the one hand, the colonies contained an endless supply of laborers who could work toward more production and greater profit. On the other hand, those individuals needed to be healthy to work and required infrastructure to support their transportation and housing needs. Aiming to resolve this particular conundrum, colonial administrators and development experts throughout the French and British empires devised numerous five- and ten-year plans to expand schools and hospitals, build new roads, improve public facilities, and grow industry.78 Although more attention was paid to native health and improving nutrition, colonial officials did not address the social roots of inequality.79
The accelerated pace of development between 1945 and 1955 did not last nor did it generate the sought-after capital to revitalize the French and British metropoles. But the decade-long push created a universal set of terms about health care, development, and modernity that Algerian nationalists were quietly absorbing.80 They observed postwar health-care debates and armed themselves with a fresh understanding of international language. They soon deployed this language to articulate political claims and demonstrate their ability to care for the Algerian population, discussed in depth in Chapters 3 and 4.
Western European and American officials did not anticipate the use by Third World actors of medicine and health care terminology, and that was not the only area from which their language would be appropriated. The rise of international organizations that promoted human rights and a revised commitment to the principles of humanitarianism after World War II fundamentally altered international politics and rewrote the rules of political engagement. Human rights and humanitarianism provided universal ideas that were devoid of race, gender, or religious preferences and therefore were easily transferable to whoever had knowledge of them. These words were disseminated through radio broadcasts and newspaper headlines that the entire world could consume. This was not the first time in the twentieth century that anticolonial actors appropriated Western rhetoric. However, two important features distinguished the 1940s and 1950s: first, the volume of charters and agreements produced, as well as the number of signatories, far exceeded the interwar period, and, second, the level of anticolonial sentiment was at an all-time high.81
The severity and extreme violence of World War II left many Western nations vulnerable and their leaders eager to find solutions that would prevent that scale of war from ever repeating itself. For the second time in twenty-five years, international cooperation became their focus as exemplified by numerous rights-based declarations, including the Atlantic Charter, the UN Charter, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949.82 However, these documents were intended to ensure Western security and European power, not enfranchise the entire world.
The United Nations, created in 1945, was the cornerstone of this internationalist spirit and served as the foundation for the ideals of global governance.83 There had been three prior comprehensive attempts at international treaties: the Peace of Westphalia (1646), the Congress of Vienna (1815), and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), none of which were able to definitively resolve the tension between international cooperation and domestic jurisdiction.84 These agreements also disproportionately favored Western European nations and the United States, a trend that bristled against the sweeping changes that decolonization introduced to international politics after World War II. The geographic span and the number of people affected by the war instilled a sense of urgency to work together, and notably every continent except Antarctica was represented in the original UN membership in 1945. But this unprecedented level of representation also meant that national delegates each had their own vision and priorities for the organization and they struggled to agree on the contents of the charter.
Algerian nationalist Ferhat Abbas closely followed the UN proceedings. On 29 April 1945, he publicly stated that “the United Nations conference assured the liberty of all people,” which he thought would soon translate into Algerian independence.85 But neither the charter nor the representatives who met in California that spring guaranteed independence, and the colonial question dominated internal debates for years to come. For example, in an effort to clarify the UN’s position on anticolonial movements, several committees debated the rights of non-self-governing territories in the early 1950s, an issue the General Assembly revisited year after year.86 Members struggled to include a colonial policy clause that, on the one hand, supported the right of all people to self-determination as articulated in Article 1(2) of the UN Charter and, on the other hand, permitted colonial governments to run their own affairs.87 By the end of the decade, as “anti-colonialism gathered momentum,” the UN had no choice but to adapt itself despite “objections from the Western powers involved.”88
Western countries tackled the conundrum of trying to ensure peace without dissolving their right to rule within their borders by intentionally omitting enforcement mechanisms.89 For instance, in a private meeting, Eleanor Roosevelt, a U.S. representative at the United Nations, who also played a critical role in writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, reportedly explained that the best way “to deal with Resolution A [on self-determination] was to amend it so that neither the timing nor the means of applying the principle would be automatic or rigid.”90 Even an eminent leader in the fight to protect all people acknowledged the interests of imperial nations behind closed doors. None of the agreements were legally binding nor could any member state or fellow signatory require that another party follow the prescriptions. Meaningful assistance and intervention of any kind were nearly impossible under these conditions often leading the Great Powers to use their commitments to human rights and humanitarianism as a weapon against each other rather than as a firm anchor to protect individuals.91
The United Nations and its charter became a prominent feature of postwar politics. Their architects had no control over who and how they were appropriated. The French did not intend to extend political rights to their empire, and colonial officials were unprepared when nationalists started articulating claims to French representatives and international organizations couched in the same terminology. But this is precisely what Algerian FLN members did. As discussed in Chapter 6, the FLN appealed to the United Nations, which provided a physical and theoretical stage for them to be heard by a broad audience and where colonial inequalities were mitigated.92 The General Assembly floor in New York, and, by extension, international organizations, temporarily removed the preeminence of state sovereignty and leveled the political playing field. Algerian nationalists expressed their grievances and publicly exposed what sovereigns previously strained to keep private, transforming international organizations and the nature of political power and authority in the twentieth century.
The revised Geneva Conventions of 1949, what historian David Forsythe calls “a moral pillar for international relations after 1945,” were a third international development upon which the Algerian nationalists later relied to claim their sovereignty.93 Between 1946 and 1949, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) led a team of international jurists, Red Cross delegates, and state government representatives in updating the three existing Geneva Conventions and ensuring better protection for civilians during times of war.94 The prestigious international organization, a beacon of moral authority in world affairs, recognized a need for broadening the scope of its humanitarian safeguards and embarked upon a contentious process during which officials struggled to balance
