Re-examining Historical Partitions: An Interview with Professor Dubnov

Arie M. Dubnov is an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs who also serves as the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University. He has a forthcoming book with the Harvard University Press, discussing the history of British federal imperialism and Zionism.

In your academic work, you suggest that partition should be seen not as a historical anomaly but as a recurring tool of imperial governance.  Could we begin by defining what a partition is?

Perhaps we should start with a definition through elimination, by saying what a partition is not. When we hear “partition,” we tend to imagine drawing lines on a map to separate things. But we draw lines on maps all the time, when redistricting areas, creating national parks, or defining administrative zones. Every partition involves line drawn on maps, yes, but it is insufficient.

From here, we can start defining “partition.”  As I see it, partition involves dividing a territory into new entities that are called nation-states. Next, the essence of these nation-states is an ethno-religious conception of majority-minority ratios and a striving for a clear demographic majority. Third, given that in most cases the human geography does not correspond with that desire, transfer of populations, voluntary or involuntary, becomes one of the tools that are considered legitimate to reengineer the space. Lastly, partition, in fact, is a way of thinking about international politics. It is about drawing international borders.  This act presupposes the existence of an international community. That, in itself, is a quintessentially modern concept that did not exist before the 20th century. It is not a coincidence that we had no partitions of this kind before we had organizations like the League of Nations and the United Nations, before a modern academic discipline calling itself “International Relations” emerged. The entities being separated are states, and these states are often defined through what I call a Wilsonian logic: a logic that prioritizes a majority-minority demographic relationship. These states are never truly homogenous, but there is always an aspiration toward homogeneity. Minority status and minoritization are seen as problems to be solved.

In most regions, populations are mixed. But the logic of partition, especially as it developed in the interwar years, accepted the idea that space could be engineered, and that populations could be transferred, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, as part of a larger scheme. Partition is much more than drawing a line or declaring a new international border. It is a framework for political thinking that aims to reconfigure space and identity.

I know this is a complex definition, but it is connected to my broader arguments: first, that partition is a distinctly modern way of thinking about politics. Second, that the British Empire, surprising as it may sound, did not turn a blind eye towards these ideas but actually absorbed and developed them.

Throughout history, empires ruled vast territories, from antiquity to modernity. We all know the phrase “divide and conquer” used by both the Roman and British empires. Partition shares some resemblance to those older imperial techniques, but it evolved differently, especially in the British Empire during the 20th century.

You highlight the common British roots to the partitions of India, Ireland, and the Middle East. Could you elaborate on how this tool functioned across different contexts?

Each of these regions had its own local history, of course, and its own vocabularies of pain and suffering. But we must zoom out and recognize the shared context.

Partition emerged first in the interwar period in response to new political challenges: populations were no longer defining themselves solely through religion or sect but through national or ethnonational identities. This shift took time for the British to understand, and they struggled to manage these national differences within the structure of empire.

In all three cases, partition seemed attractive in the eyes of British thinkers who were searching for a method of containment. Often, its aim, from the metropole’s point of view, was to allow the groups on the ground to enjoy a greater degree of self-government while hoping that these semi-independent states or dominions would still feel affinity for Britain and its imperial project.

One challenge in understanding partition is that people often associate it with very specific events. For someone with roots in South Asia, the term immediately calls to mind the partition of India and Pakistan. Those well-versed in Middle Eastern history might think of the 1947 partition plan for Palestine. These were monumental events—earthquakes in world history. The partition of India came at a heavy cost and marked an early moment of decolonization. In many ways, partition functioned as a “quick and dirty” exit strategy for a declining British Empire.

But here’s the twist: the original ideas behind partition were almost the opposite. In the early 1900s and especially during the interwar period of the 1920s and 30s, the British were still operating under the assumption that differences could be contained. The empire would provide an imperial umbrella under which self-governing entities could emerge. These would be states that are not fully sovereign, but still functioning. The vision of partition before World War II and the way it was implemented afterward are, in many ways, contradictory.

In your definition of partition, you highlight that it is not just about drawing lines, but about the distribution of power that follows. In your study, is there always a power imbalance between the two parties being partitioned? And what role does the empire—the third party—continue to play in the aftermath?

Let me apply a geometrical analogy. When we think about political relationships, we often imagine two actors in the room: one more powerful than the other. But sometimes, we need to picture a triangle. Even within that triangle, there is imbalance, but it is a tripod of relationships.

One extreme explanation that I reject is a sort of conspiracy theory: that everything was orchestrated solely by the empire: the metropole, the sinister thinkers in smoky backrooms of imperial capitals who came up with ideas and shoved them down the throats of passive, voiceless locals. In this view, the locals have no agency, no role beyond being victims or recipients of imperial orders.

The other extreme is the apologetic version, often found in traditional British imperial historiography: that the British had good intentions, and it was the “natives,” depicted as fanatical, uncivilized people, who were so consumed by their own ethnic or religious divisions that they effectively partitioned themselves. In this version, the British are simply trying to manage chaos, not responsible for it.

Both of these narratives are caricatures. One absolves imperial responsibility, the other erases local agency. The historical picture is far more complicated.

Partition absolutely began as a metropolitan project: an idea developed within the empire, by imperial thinkers, as part of a broader effort to rethink the empire’s structure in the 20th century. Much of it was driven by British interests, including practical considerations like efficiency. It seemed preferable to let locals rule themselves rather than deploy British troops and administrators to every distant corner of the empire. One of the British Empire’s points of pride was its ability to govern vast territories like India or large parts of Africa with relatively limited manpower. Creating self-governing local entities was part of that strategy.

Partition also began to take shape when majority-minority dynamics started to be seen as threats. For example, some scholars trace the roots of India’s partition back to 1905 and the division of Bengal into a Muslim-majority and a Hindu-majority region. Even then, you see the early language of fear: minorities worried about being overrun or marginalized by majorities.

While the British were the ones drawing the lines on the map and designing political systems, it was often the local minorities who were pushing in that direction. Take the 1940 Lahore Resolution, for instance, led by the man who would become the founding father of Pakistan. He declared that Muslims and Hindus were two distinct nationalities and advocated for separation, out of fear that Muslims, as a minority, would be suppressed in a Hindu-majority India.

Therefore, even within an imperial framework, minority groups often had a strong interest in carving out separate spaces for themselves. That raises a deeper question: Why did people begin to view their differences as irreconcilable? After all, in both South Asia and the Middle East, people of different religions, castes, and ethnicities had lived together for centuries. What changed?

Many would argue that colonialism played a central role. It created the ideological oven in which these new understandings of difference were baked. The British, for example, were often the ones asking: What is your religion? What are your holy texts? Which group do you belong to? In an ugly academic jargon we can say that whether intentionally or not, British colonial rule helped reify notions of ethno-religious difference. The British Raj, where multiple groups lived side by side and intermingled for centuries, is perhaps the most striking: the former multicolored plurality was no longer considered a blessing but regarded with suspicion, as the source of violent animosity.

These were not always the ways in which people had previously defined themselves. But once those categories were imposed and internalized, they became powerful. And people began to act on them by actively advocating for separation.

Hence, I return to the geometric metaphor. We should not think in terms of two actors, the colonizer and the colonized, but instead in terms of a triangle. It is not just Hindu versus Muslim, or Jew versus Palestinian, or Catholic versus Protestant. In all these cases, there is a third actor: the imperial power, watching and influencing from above. Understanding partition requires acknowledging all three sides of that triangle.

You described partition as one tool among many in the imperial toolbox – often chosen as a quick or convenient exit. What other options did empires have at the moment of decolonization, especially in the post–World War II context? And why was partition ultimately the option selected in cases like South Asia and the Middle East?

Many historians today, myself included, are revisiting what we call the roads not taken—the alternative possibilities that existed. Traditional history tends to present a linear, almost inevitable path: that all roads led to war, independence, and partition in 1947–48. But more and more scholars are showing that other ideas were seriously considered.

What were these alternatives?

One prominent model was local autonomy under the protection of empire. These ideas took different forms. For example, a classic option from the British imperial playbook was Dominion status, or what some refer to as dominionization.

In the 1930s, Gandhi famously said he found it humiliating to be called a “subject” and wanted to be a “citizen.” But he did not necessarily mean a citizen of an independent India; he spoke of being a citizen of the empire. The vision was of imperial citizenship: moving from colonial subjecthood to a meaningful, rights-bearing status within a broader imperial framework.

In these historical cases, was partition intended as a permanent solution, or was it viewed as a transitional phase toward a different political arrangement, similar to how dominion status could lead to independence?

To answer succinctly, it depends on who you ask.

Some British imperial thinkers saw the separation of communities as an interim phase. A key architect of partition in the Middle East once framed it in highly paternalistic terms, using a metaphor of two children in a school who are constantly fighting. The only solution, he suggested, was to separate them into different rooms for a while. But eventually, they would mature, outgrow the animosity, and come together again. That was the argument made by figures like Reginald Coupland, who ten years after the partition still insisted it was only temporary. One day, he claimed, the two peoples would become more “civilized” and collaborative.

This perspective, I would argue, is very British. It not only casts Britain in the role of the wise and neutral Solomon—calmly cutting the baby in half while the locals are blinded by fanaticism—but also reflects how the British saw themselves. After all, Britain itself was an amalgam: England, Scotland, and Wales, all unified as the United Kingdom. British thinkers asked, implicitly, “If we managed it, why haven’t you?” They saw partition not as an endpoint, but as a transitional stage toward a more unified future.

But many local actors did not see it that way, especially once violence erupted. For them, partition was not just a political arrangement: it came with expulsion, conquest, and the logic of acquiring as much land as possible with the fewest people on it. It followed a Wilsonian logic: try to avoid having minority populations inside your borders. So, partition was seen— mistakenly, I believe—as a one-time event, a rupture that would create a new, stable status quo.

If you look at what actually happened in the aftermath of partition, what you see is not closure, but an ongoing project. Governments became obsessed with making partitions “work.” Borders had to be sealed. Populations monitored. Bureaucracies and armies of clerks were mobilized to administer the outcomes. It became a continuous effort, not a one-time act.

And that is why, to this day, some of the most painful conflicts in the world are in post-partition spaces. These remain, in many people’s eyes, “unfinished business.”

In political activist circles, for example, it is not uncommon to see comparisons between Kashmir and Gaza. Both are seen as unresolved legacies of the partitions of 1947–48. In both cases, partition failed to produce the clean, stable separation it promised. Instead, it produced enduring crises. Perceived as an amputation or a cut in the flesh, post-partitioned spaces never solve the problem and only breed phantom pains for the lost limb. The desire to return to some glorious, wholesome pre-partitioned past comes together with those phantom pains, but usually without the desire to restore a lost plurality and diversity, but by sticking fanatically to dreams of homogeneity.

Even today, we are witnessing the consequences. As we speak, there is a devastating war in the Middle East that is accompanied by unprecedented destruction and an unmistakable rhetoric of incompatibility and explicit calls for transfer and ethnic cleansing. And recently, we came dangerously close to a war between two nuclear-armed states, India and Pakistan, both of which possess deeply rooted partition-era grievances. It seems that empirically, the argument that partition is a painful but necessary conflict resolution method is refuted before our eyes.

Dubnov spoke with Sheth on June 7, 2025. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee’s own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR or the author.