Statelessness, Citizenship and Annotated Discriminations: Meta Documents and the Aesthetics of the Subtle at the United Nations

Abstract

From 1906 to 1980, the Indigenous population of the Southwest Pacific island nation of Vanuatu (New Hebrides) was stateless. They had no citizenship. This contravened the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserting that “everyone has the right to a nationality”. After 1948, the New Hebrides joined a number of European colonies that received United Nations scrutiny for racial discrimination, economic negligence and human rights violations. In the archives of the British colonial administration of the New Hebrides are a series of documents outlining how officials negotiated and contested UN conventions, declarations and resolutions. This article argues that these “meta-documents” comprise “aesthetics of the subtle”; reports on reports, handwritten annotations on diplomatic cables and exclamation marks on the margins of government paper. These interpretations, negations and commentaries on official documents disrupt binary accounts of colonialism in an era when the telos of decolonization informs the narrative of imperial to post-colonial political change.

Keywords:

• Statelessness
• Citizenship
• Colonialism
• Metadata
• Aesthetics

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a paper delivered at the conference, The Political Life of Documents: Archives, Memory and Contested Knowledge, held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, 15–16 January 2010. The Department of Anthropology and Archaeology in the Division of Humanities at the University of Otago generously provided funding to participate at this conference. The feedback from conference participants on this paper has been highly valuable. I would especially like to thank Ann Stoler for her supportive insights and comments on this paper. A Division of Humanities (University of Otago) Research Grant funded the research for this article under the project title “Citizenship, ‘Race’ and Rights in Vanuatu”. I thank the Special Collections Librarian at the University of Auckland Library, Stephen Innes for allowing me to conduct archival research as well as kind permission to include the figures reproduced here. I am particularly grateful to Stephen and his colleagues, Wakefield Harper, William Hamill and Jo Birks for helping make my research in Auckland so pleasant, productive and inspiring. At the University of Otago Library, I thank Paula Hasler for making available records held at the National Archives of the UK, whose files at Kew have also been consulted for this research. This research also incorporates records held on microfilm at the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB), headquartered at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia. This article has benefited from feedback, readings, comments and assistance from and conversations with, both during and after the conference, Jie Yang, Noel Lobley, Fiona Murphy, Mei Ding, Jeff Scofield, Ewan Maidment, Vrushali Patil, Chris Brickell, Roberta Jenkins, Rochelle Bailey, Kirsten Stallard, and Juliet Begley. I am particularly grateful to Will Anderson, whose own interpretation of analogous “aesthetics of the subtle” in African archives continues to inspire me. I would like to extend my deepest thanks, appreciation and gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Christopher Kaplonski and Catherine Trundle for their energy, enthusiasm and support in editing, discussing and progressing both this article and “the political life of documents”.

Notes

A condominium is a territory that is jointly governed by two or more countries. This does not involve partition, but joint administration over a geographically contiguous territory. Past condomina (plural for condominium) include the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of the Sudan (1898–1955), the Anglo-American Condominium of the Canton and Enderbury Islands (now part of Kiribati) (1939–1979) and the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) (1906–1980) (Samuels 2008). Although the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium technically involved joint administration of the Sudan, it was dominated by the UK with minimal Egyptian input (Samuels 2008: 752). Given British dominance in the Sudanese arrangement, the New Hebrides was the only colonial condominium to govern an Indigenous population, duplicating and sometimes triplicating administration with two police forces, two immigration departments, three to four legal codes and two education systems with separate schools teaching English and French (Miles 1998: 32–58; Rodman 2001: 21–50).

The author is grateful to the editors of this special volume for emphasizing this relationship between power, politics and documents.

Condominium of the New Hebrides v Charles Williams of Malekula, Judgment Number A9/69, 05 August 1969, PMB 1145, Supreme Court of Vanuatu: Judgments of the Joint Court of the New Hebrides, 1911–1977, Reel 5, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB), Canberra, Australia. See http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/pambu/catalogue/ for full indexes. Because there is a likelihood that the parties involved are still alive and the case did not result in conviction, pseudonyms have been applied and other details changed to protect identities.

Condominium of the New Hebrides v Charles Williams of Malekula 1969, para 6.

Condominium of the New Hebrides v Charles Williams of Malekula 1969, para 2.

Condominium of the New Hebrides v Charles Williams of Malekula 1969, para 6, emphasis added.

Condominium of the New Hebrides v Charles Williams of Malekula 1969, para 7.

The protocol by which the UK and France governed the New Hebrides established three sets of law: English, French and Condominium (Rawlings 1999, 2001). French citizens living in the territory came under the laws of France, while British subjects lived under English common law. This established French and British citizens as ressortissants of their respective powers (Rodman 2001: 29). Citizens of third countries had to choose which law to live under within one month of arriving in the territory or the condominium authorities would decide for them. Citizens of third countries were classified as optants. The condominium was also responsible for the Native Criminal Code, which in effect comprised a fourth legal system. Even though Indigenous New Hebrideans were stateless, they could be subject to all four bodies of law depending on the case; see A.H. Egan “The British Half-Caste in the New Hebrides”, 22 August 1945, “Nationality Problems in the New Hebrides”, NHBS, 3/II/40/6, MSS & Archives 2003/1, Special Collections, University of Auckland Library.

A.H. Egan, “The British Half-Caste in the New Hebrides”, 22 August 1945, NHBS, 3/II/40/6.

Savingrams were a method of written communication introduced in the early 1930s to replace telegrams that were copied to a number of different British colonial administrations. They were designed to reduce costs under the coalition government of Ramsey MacDonald. See the British National Archives, [Online] http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Savingrams_and_Saving_Telegrams

Statistics have been vital and in the making of modernity and the emergence of governmentality that constructed the post-Enlightenment subject through the power knowledge couplet (Foucault 1973, 1976 [1990]; Hacking 1990, 1991). The author is grateful to Catherine Trundle for making this point. For an anthropological analysis of statistics as vectors for broader questions of political identity, see Urla (1993) and Desrosières (1998) on the history of the relationship between the state and statistics, and on the use of quantitative reasoning in US political processes and American public representations of politics and statistics, see Peters (2001).

The Fourth Committee is now known as the Fourth Special Committee Political and Decolonization. In 1960, the UN issued the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Resolution 1514(XV). In 1962, it established an additional forum to oversee decolonization, the Special Committee of 24, or officially The Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (United Nations 2010: 1). Both continue to operate to this day. The author is grateful to Vrushali Patil for clarifying these changes in the governance of decolonization processes at the UN.

W.A.C. Mathieson, “Confidential Annex IV Report on the 1951 Session of Special Committee on Information Transmitted Under Article 73(e) of the United Nations Charter”, p. 2, 30 October 1951, “Statistical Information Required for the United Nations” NHBS, 3/II/58/52, MSS & Archives 2003/1, Special Collections, University of Auckland Library.

W.A.C. Mathieson, p. 3, 30 October 1951, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

W.A.C. Mathieson, p. 4, 30 October 1951, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

W.A.C. Mathieson, “Confidential Report on the Fourth Committee of the Sixth General Assembly”, p. 10, January 1952, “Statistical Information Required for the United Nations”, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

Colonial Office, “Notes for guidance in preparing transmissions in accordance with Article 73(e) of the United Nations Charter”, p. 9, 1952, “Statistical Information Required for the United Nations”, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

For analysis of bullet points, see Strathern (2006: 181–205).

Colonial Office, “Notes for guidance in preparing transmissions in accordance with Article 73(e) of the United Nations Charter”, p. 15, 1952, “Statistical Information Required for the United Nations”, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

“The Secretary of State for the Colonies—The Officer Administering the Government of New Hebrides, Western Pacific”, 17 June 1950, “Communications with the United Nations and the Specialised Agencies”, “Statistical Information Required for the United Nations” NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

“Communications with the United Nations and the Specialised Agencies”, 17 June 1950, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

“Communications with the United Nations and the Specialised Agencies”, 17 June 1950, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

“Communications with the United Nations and the Specialised Agencies”, 17 June 1950, NHBS, 3/II/58/52.

The author appreciates the insightful comments of Catherine Trundle in enriching the points made in this paragraph.

WPHC, 28/CF/214/2/22 “United Nations Organisation: Racial Discrimination 1963–66”, MSS & Archives 2003/1, Special Collections, University of Auckland Library.

“The Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides—The Acting High Commissioner for the Western Pacific”, 30 May 1964, WPHC, 28/CF/214/2/22.

“The Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides—The Acting High Commissioner for the Western Pacific”, 30 May 1964, WPHC, 28/CF/214/2/22.

“Secretary of State for the Colonies—The High Commissioner for the Western Pacific”, 19 August 1966, WPHC, 28/CF/214/2/22.

“Secretary of State for the Colonies—The High Commissioner for the Western Pacific”, 19 August 1966, WPHC, 28/CF/214/2/22.