In all these ways, European colonial powers introduced new social and political ideas into their territories, and these continued to shape the postcolonial constitutions, especially in the hands of an indigenous elite keen to participate in the emerging international order. The new nation-states had clearly bounded territories, languages, religious conventions, and their own laws. Behind it all lay ideas about universal progress and an international order that recognized the ‘comity of nations’, a concept emphasizing mutual respect for laws in a world of equal political entities.
