3 - Raphael Lemkin and the Protection of Small Nations

Summary

The language of transgression has been multidirectional from its beginnings. Using it to expose abuses, as in the campaign to stop the system of labor exploitation in the Congo in the name of humanity and civilization, was common. Violating the sovereignty of another European power’s colonial possessions was a potential in this discourse, especially when the state that purported to represent human freedom in general could align this universal ideal with its interests. Britain’s campaign to end the slave trade embodied this posture in the nineteenth century. In this respect, Britain’s rival was less Germany than the USA, whose developing naval power and trading capacity combined with its anti-colonial self-understanding and republican civilizing mission to produce world-ordering aspirations. These would be realized in the League of Nations when “international conscience” and the “public mind” were joined in the reformist imperial project of tutelage over “backward” peoples” in its mandates system.