Bradley R. Simpson, "The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Jan 25, 2026

Bradley R. Simpson, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies who wrote The First Right, traces a century of competing meanings of self-determination. He explores decolonization, indigenous and regional movements, UN debates, and economic sovereignty. The conversation highlights how grassroots claims and great-power politics shaped global order in surprising, contested ways.

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ANECDOTE

Activism Sparked The Inquiry

Bradley R. Simpson describes his activist origins working on East Timor in the 1990s and how that inspired his research on self-determination.
He recounts being struck by U.S. officials who acknowledged East Timorese rights yet argued the territory was "too small" for true self-government.

INSIGHT

Self-Determination Is Historically Contested

Self-determination constantly shifted across the 20th century instead of holding a fixed meaning tied only to World War I moments.
Simpson argues the idea's scope changed through contests between top-down institutions and bottom-up movements.

INSIGHT

Five Phases Shape The Idea

Simpson divides self-determination into historical phases shaped by changing international politics and the global political economy.
He locates a pivotal phase beginning in World War II when institutions like the UN transformed claim-making venues.

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The idea of self-determination is one of the most significant in modern international politics. For more than a century diplomats, lawyers, scholars, activists, and ordinary people in every part of the globe have wrestled with its meaning and implications for decolonization, human rights, sovereignty, and international order. The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000 (Oxford UP, 2025) argues that there was no one self-determination, but a century-long contest between contending visions of sovereignty and rights that were as varied and changing as the nature of sovereignty itself. In this globe-spanning narrative, Simpson argues that self-determination's meaning has often emerged not just from the United Nations but from the claims of movements and peoples on the margins of international society. Powerful states, he shows, persistently rejected expansive self-determination claims, arguing that these threatened great power conflict, the dissolution of international order, or the unravelling of the world economy.

Pacific Island territories, indigenous peoples, regional and secessionist movements, and transnational solidarity groups, among others, rejected the efforts of large, powerful states to define self-determination along narrow lines. Instead, international historian Bradley R. Simpson shows they offered expansive visions of economic, political, and cultural sovereignty ranging far beyond the movement for decolonization with which they are often associated. As they did so, these movements and groups helped to vernacularize self-determination as a language of social justice and rights for people around the world.

An ambitious work of global breadth on a key geopolitical issue, The First Right transforms how we think about the making of the twentieth century world order and the place of the global South and decolonization in it.

Dr. Bradley R. Simpson is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University.

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