Self-Determination
Understand self-determination — the principle that peoples have the right to govern themselves, which reshaped the world map after both world wars.
Self-determination — the principle that peoples defined by shared identity have the right to determine their own political status and form of government — is one of the most influential and contested ideas in modern international relations. It has justified the creation of new nations, the dissolution of empires, and ongoing separatist movements worldwide.
The concept has roots in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution's principle of popular sovereignty, but it gained its modern form during and after World War I. President Woodrow Wilson championed 'the self-determination of peoples' as a guiding principle for the postwar settlement. New nations — Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland, the Baltic states — emerged from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German, and Russian empires.
But self-determination proved easier to proclaim than to implement. Which groups constituted 'peoples' with the right to statehood? Borders that satisfied one ethnic group inevitably left others as minorities. Wilson's principles were applied inconsistently — European peoples received new states, while colonial subjects were denied the same right. After World War II, self-determination became the rallying cry of decolonization movements across Asia and Africa, ultimately dismantling the European colonial empires. The tension between self-determination and territorial integrity remains one of the most difficult problems in international law.