3 - From Protectorate to Colony to Mandate, 1920

Summary

Chapter 3 traces the accretion of imperial administration in Nauru from 1888 to 1920. The formal status of Nauru shifted twice, from protectorate to colony to British mandate. From 1888, Nauru was administered as part of the German Marshall Islands, and later subsumed under the direct colonial control of German New Guinea in 1906. The Jaluit Gesellschaft sold its phosphate rights to the British-owned Pacific Phosphate Company, which developed a mining operation under German administration. In 1914 Nauru was occupied by Australia on British request. The chapter retraces the advent of the League of Nations mandate system, arguing that C Mandate status marked an uneasy compromise between advocates of internationalised administration of the occupied territories and the annexationist Dominions of Australia and South Africa. As Nauru’s legal status shifted from protectorate to C Mandate, administrative control was assumed by Australia pursuant to an intra-imperial bargain between Britain, Australia and New Zealand, which established a tripartite phosphate monopoly. The chapter concludes that the basic division of public and private authority established in 1888 survived this shift.