Periodic Reporting for period 4 - INVISIHIST (Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South)
Período documentado: 2024-08-01 hasta 2025-07-31
In the current discourse about the 'crisis' of multilateralism it is frequently overlooked that the majority of world states, and thereby the majority of UN members, identify as Global South actors. This is a taxonomy encapsulates how shared agendas led to a sense of solidarity between peoples and states in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The term Global South, rather than Developing World or Third World, is employed in this project to capture both the state, non-state and regional actors who formed part of the movement.
The existing historiography of the UN is largely from the perspective of Western actors, and ignores or downplays the role of Global South actors. These histories enhance the image of the organisation as a passive entity and a vehicle for the interests of Western powers such as Britain, France and the United States (US). The liberal world order is presented here as the rules-based system led by the US since 1945 which established an unequal relationship between North and South. This has created the current situation where the UN is broadly misunderstood and the agency of Global South actors has been rendered largely invisible.
This project revealed and unraveled the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. Our findings show that while the UN served to progress some issues, especially self-determination and economic sovereignty, new hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion were formed between postcolonial actors and the UN, which led to the replication of old biases, and the introduction of new systems of exclusion as Global South agency evolved. This demonstrated the complexity of decolonisation, which points to its limits as an emancipatory framework.
Why is it important for society?
Invisihist has produced the first truly global history of the biggest and most important international organisation in existence. This provides new histories about the objectives, policies and visions of the Global South members of the UN, revealing that considering their majority membership since 1960, they have been impactful in changing how the UN works, and inscribing their agency in the international system. This provides a more accurate impression of how the UN changed over time, what role non-Western members played in its evolution, and how this impacted both the functioning and utility of the UN which is a ground-breaking contribution to current debates about reform and renewal of the organisation.
The project exposed histories of states, peoples and issues that remained obscured due to the hierarchies of power and processes of inclusion and exclusion with which the UN functions. This reveals that the matrices of power of the UN dramatically impacted (and continue to impact) the evolution of South-South relations, as much as the long-acknowledged North-South axis. This means that our world cannot be explained by simple dichotomies of North-South or East-West relationships, but by a more complex and interwoven system of hierarchies, solidarities, regional and sub-national groupings, which ebbed and flowed through the UN over time.
What are the overall objectives?
The project traces the invisible history within and between the Global South and the UN, examining the successes and discontents of decolonisation, outlining new genealogies of issues that have been traditionally deemed as 'failures' and analyses the role of some lesser-known actors who continue to be disenfranchised by the evolution of South-South dynamics. Ultimately, it is shown that by using their collective role to shift the liberal world order, Global South actors performed a nuanced agency which produced its own order with positive and negative results.
The existing historiography of the UN is largely from the perspective of Western actors, and ignores or downplays the role of Global South actors. These histories enhance the image of the organisation as a passive entity and a vehicle for the interests of Western powers such as Britain, France and the United States (US). The liberal world order is presented here as the rules-based system led by the US since 1945 which established an unequal relationship between North and South. This has created the current situation where the UN is broadly misunderstood and the agency of Global South actors has been rendered largely invisible.
This project revealed and unraveled the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. Our findings show that while the UN served to progress some issues, especially self-determination and economic sovereignty, new hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion were formed between postcolonial actors and the UN, which led to the replication of old biases, and the introduction of new systems of exclusion as Global South agency evolved. This demonstrated the complexity of decolonisation, which points to its limits as an emancipatory framework.
Why is it important for society?
Invisihist has produced the first truly global history of the biggest and most important international organisation in existence. This provides new histories about the objectives, policies and visions of the Global South members of the UN, revealing that considering their majority membership since 1960, they have been impactful in changing how the UN works, and inscribing their agency in the international system. This provides a more accurate impression of how the UN changed over time, what role non-Western members played in its evolution, and how this impacted both the functioning and utility of the UN which is a ground-breaking contribution to current debates about reform and renewal of the organisation.
The project exposed histories of states, peoples and issues that remained obscured due to the hierarchies of power and processes of inclusion and exclusion with which the UN functions. This reveals that the matrices of power of the UN dramatically impacted (and continue to impact) the evolution of South-South relations, as much as the long-acknowledged North-South axis. This means that our world cannot be explained by simple dichotomies of North-South or East-West relationships, but by a more complex and interwoven system of hierarchies, solidarities, regional and sub-national groupings, which ebbed and flowed through the UN over time.
What are the overall objectives?
The project traces the invisible history within and between the Global South and the UN, examining the successes and discontents of decolonisation, outlining new genealogies of issues that have been traditionally deemed as 'failures' and analyses the role of some lesser-known actors who continue to be disenfranchised by the evolution of South-South dynamics. Ultimately, it is shown that by using their collective role to shift the liberal world order, Global South actors performed a nuanced agency which produced its own order with positive and negative results.
Work Period: February 2020-July 2025.
Major Team Accomplishments:
1. Global Orders Podcast series which is available on Spotify and Apple Music. This cover three series of intereviews and analyses of issue of Global Order and their historic underpinnings.
2. Invisible Histories seminar series, 2023-2025. During this series we combined a dissemination of the projects and research within Invisihist with outreach to related projects and scholars in the field. We also showcased the project research both internally and externally.
3. Making and Breaking Global Order, Workshop, October 2022.
Major Team Accomplishments:
1. Global Orders Podcast series which is available on Spotify and Apple Music. This cover three series of intereviews and analyses of issue of Global Order and their historic underpinnings.
2. Invisible Histories seminar series, 2023-2025. During this series we combined a dissemination of the projects and research within Invisihist with outreach to related projects and scholars in the field. We also showcased the project research both internally and externally.
3. Making and Breaking Global Order, Workshop, October 2022.
The collected works of the Invisihist project progresses the state of the art in four areas;
Histories of the UN
Traditionally, under-utilization of, archival and oral history sources in the Global South, and the reliance on the UN institutions and agencies through their archives and publications, have led historians to write the histories of the UN from a predominantly Western perspective. This research challenges that view by focusing precisely on the agency of traditionally marginalised actors. Our scholarship combines national and transnational perspectives to analyse how issues are refracted through organisations and how state and non-state actors utilise organisations as networked platforms. This has helped to place UN history in the broader frame of global history by showing how the UN has played a role as a catalyst and how it can illuminate diverse histories.
The UN in ‘new international histories’
The sub-field of ‘new international history’ has provided an intellectual history of diplomacy by focusing on how actors negotiate within and outside organisations, thereby influencing each other. Our work expands on this approach by analysing how state representatives cooperated to organise and concretise their initiatives, and translate their individual objectives regarding decolonisation issues, into a wider ideological campaign to tackle the North-South divide. It also demonstrates how officials and experts within the organisation have played a role in shaping agendas, helping to decolonise the UN from within.
Histories of Decolonisation
Our research shows how Global South actors used the rhetoric of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism to sustain a sense of solidarity. However, we also analyse the difference between the ‘high’ rhetoric of the post-colonial elite who often mimicked their Western counterparts in their quest to build legitimacy, the different ways in which they communicated global ideas to their national publics and how between these actors of the Global South, new political dynamics, power struggles, and ultimately hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion evolved.
Histories of the Global South.
This project has uncovered some of the lesser-known histories of Global South actors who tried to access the UN, with varying success. This means that we have investigated archives which are both endangered and not often considered sources of knowledge about the functioning of the UN. What we discovered were asymmetries within the decolonisation movement which tended to lead to the advantaging of some actors and views over others. Between the various actors we researched, from national movements to liberation groups, the reality of ‘achieving’ decolonisation sometimes diminished the political currency of that frame, but not the ultimate value of the concept. This has shed light on the political evolution of global south agency, revealing how the grouping has morphed and evolved over time which offers new insights into histories of global south actors which emerge as complex, contested and neither teleological nor homogenous.
Histories of the UN
Traditionally, under-utilization of, archival and oral history sources in the Global South, and the reliance on the UN institutions and agencies through their archives and publications, have led historians to write the histories of the UN from a predominantly Western perspective. This research challenges that view by focusing precisely on the agency of traditionally marginalised actors. Our scholarship combines national and transnational perspectives to analyse how issues are refracted through organisations and how state and non-state actors utilise organisations as networked platforms. This has helped to place UN history in the broader frame of global history by showing how the UN has played a role as a catalyst and how it can illuminate diverse histories.
The UN in ‘new international histories’
The sub-field of ‘new international history’ has provided an intellectual history of diplomacy by focusing on how actors negotiate within and outside organisations, thereby influencing each other. Our work expands on this approach by analysing how state representatives cooperated to organise and concretise their initiatives, and translate their individual objectives regarding decolonisation issues, into a wider ideological campaign to tackle the North-South divide. It also demonstrates how officials and experts within the organisation have played a role in shaping agendas, helping to decolonise the UN from within.
Histories of Decolonisation
Our research shows how Global South actors used the rhetoric of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism to sustain a sense of solidarity. However, we also analyse the difference between the ‘high’ rhetoric of the post-colonial elite who often mimicked their Western counterparts in their quest to build legitimacy, the different ways in which they communicated global ideas to their national publics and how between these actors of the Global South, new political dynamics, power struggles, and ultimately hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion evolved.
Histories of the Global South.
This project has uncovered some of the lesser-known histories of Global South actors who tried to access the UN, with varying success. This means that we have investigated archives which are both endangered and not often considered sources of knowledge about the functioning of the UN. What we discovered were asymmetries within the decolonisation movement which tended to lead to the advantaging of some actors and views over others. Between the various actors we researched, from national movements to liberation groups, the reality of ‘achieving’ decolonisation sometimes diminished the political currency of that frame, but not the ultimate value of the concept. This has shed light on the political evolution of global south agency, revealing how the grouping has morphed and evolved over time which offers new insights into histories of global south actors which emerge as complex, contested and neither teleological nor homogenous.