Introduction: Non-Independent Territories and Small States: Retrospect and Prospect

• Author: Paul Sutton
• Pages: 23-43

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- INTRODUCTION -

INTRODUCTION

NON-INDEPENDENT TERRITORIES AND

SMALL STATES: RETROSPECT AND

PROSPECT

Some 20 years ago I published a paper in which I argued: ‘By the

end of this century colonialism in the form known in the previous

century will have all but gone. Only the rocks will remain’ (Sutton,

1987, 5). With hindsight I was overly ‘optimistic’ about the early

demise of colonialism, as only two of the seven territories I predicted

would become independent in the next five years eventually did so

(Namibia and parts of the Trust Territory of the Pacific), with another,

Western Sahara, then and now, currently stalled. At the same time, the

collapse of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia has created the conditions

for the emergence of more new and ‘small’ states whether formally, as

in the cases of Estonia and Montenegro, or ‘de facto’ and disputed as

in Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh and Trans-Dniester. Moreover the

processes of ‘decolonisation’ and ‘fragmentation’ might still be

incomplete as ‘overseas territories’ in the Caribbean, such as Bermuda

and the Netherlands Antilles, continue to question their status, as

does Nevis in respect of St Kitts. It is therefore still too early to draw a

final line under ‘formal’ decolonisation while recent history has shown

the need to be very aware of the possible consequences of irredentist

conflicts, particularly in multi-ethnic federal states and/or disparate

island clusters such as the Philippines and Indonesia.

In this introduction I provide an overview of some of the issues

that have influenced the debate on decolonisation for non-independent

territories and small states over the last 50 or so years. The linkage

between the two is not a necessary one, as some ‘large’ states could

emerge from failed unitary states or federations, but the reality of

decolonisation in its most recent phase, as well as the present

configuration of non-independent territories, suggest a very strong

association between small size and the prospects for future

PAUL S UTTON

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- GOVERNANCE IN THE NON-INDEPENDENT CARIBBEAN -

decolonisation. The issues more or less chronologically run from a

concern with viability, the prospects for economic development, the

practice of good governance, and the promise of a ‘half-way house’

between sovereignty and political dependence through the exercise of

‘autonomy’. There are many other issues that have affected small states

but these are the main ones that impinge directly on the political

future of non-independent territories. These issues also shape the

thinking of those within the non-independent territories who may be

seeking a major revision of status (as against incremental adjustment)

and the metropolitan powers who currently exercise tutelage over them.

However, before I proceed there is the question of definition. While

there is no consensus on what constitutes a ‘small state’ there is a

growing practice of recognising small sovereign states as those with a

population of one and a half million or below. On that criterion there

are currently 51 small sovereign states (including the Vatican) grouped

as follows:

Africa (11 states): Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Gabon, Mauritius,

Swaziland, Djibouti, Comoros, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Šão

Tomé and Principe, and Seychelles.

Asia (six states): Timor Leste, Bhutan, Qatar, Bahrain, Brunei, and

Maldives.

Caribbean (12 states): Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname,

the Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and The

Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and St Kitts and Nevis.

Europe (11 states): Estonia, Cyprus, Montenegro, Luxembourg,

Malta, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and the

Vatican.

Pacific (11 states): Fiji Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa,

Micronesia, Tonga, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru, and Tuvalu.

By contrast, the determination of non-independent territories is

more problematic. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly lists

only 16 countries as ‘non-self-governing’ (United Nations, 2007) when

in reality there are many more. How many more is a matter of exercise

of judgement over what constitutes the degree of independence and of

self-government as well as the perceptions and actions of both the

‘local’ inhabitants and the respective metropolitan power. Baldacchino

and Milne (2006, Table 1), for example, list no less than 115 sub-

national island jurisdictions (SNIJs) which exercise some form of

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