Join the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs' Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) program for a book talk with author Bradley Simpson, Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut. Prof. Simpson will present on his newest book, The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000.
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 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 his new book, Bradley 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.
Brad Simpson is a Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 (Stanford, 2008). His most recent book is The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000 (Oxford, 2025). He is also founder and director of the Indonesia and East TImor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive.
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