A World Divided

This wide-ranging and important book is about the global struggle for human rights in the age of nation-states that emerged from colonial empires as a first major stage of globalisation involving the oppression and subjugation of native peoples and their attempted assimilation into the dominant invading culture. The nation-state has come to represent rights and citizenship, and is the entity that can at once enforce and violate human rights, especially with respect to minorities: who belongs and who is excluded? After an initial chapter on empires and rulers in the 18th century, the book subsequently focuses on very different individual histories including Greece, America, Brazil, Armenia, Namibia, Korea, the Soviet Union and Palestine and Israel. The latest UN figures calculate that 68.5 million people have been forcibly displaced, an already staggering number set to increase with further environmental and political fallout. It is also fascinating to learn that between 1815 and 1914, a total of 82 million people migrated, including 55 million across the Atlantic, of which 60% to the US. Each story has its own focal point, whether the marginalisation of indigenous peoples, slavery in Brazil, Jewish minorities in Europe or the ambiguities in the simultaneous promotion and repression of human rights in the USSR. The overall dynamic is that popular uprising and mobilisation have been essential for social progress and overcoming discrimination. We must necessarily live with diversity and differences, and I agree with the author that human rights remain our best hope for the future as they are gradually extended to cover more ground.