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African Origins of the Mandates Idea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Wm. Roger Louis
Wm. Roger Louis
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Yale University.
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Extract

As the Allied troops overran the German colonies the First World War British publicists began to debate whether these territories should be returned to Germany, placed under some sort of international control, or sliced up and annexed by the conquering powers. There was little support for the proposal to hand diem back to Germany. In part this was because of the widely held belief that the Germans were guilty of “atrocities” in Africa no less appalling than those committed in King Leopold's Congo Free State before it was annexed by Belgium in 1908. The real question was whether the German colonies should be annexed or “internationalized.” On the left of the political spectrum the Independent Labor Party urged international administration as a means of uprooting imperialism as a cause of war. On the right the conservative press advocated annexation pure and simple as a means of preventing war by strengthening the British Empire. The mandates system itself was a compromise between these opposing ideas. It was viewed by those on the left as a limited triumph in the cause of internationalization; and by those on the right as annexation in all but name.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Winter 1965 , pp. 20 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1965

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References

1 Minutes of the British Imperial War Cabinet (secret), December 20, 1918, Sir Robert Borden Papers (National Archives of Canada).

2 Ibid.

3 Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (13 vols.; Washington, D.C.:U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942–1947), Vol. 3, p. 750.Google Scholar

4 The origins of these West African negotiations are still obscure, but see the copies of the Anglo-French agreements of September 13, 1914, and February 28, 1916, for Togoland and the Cameroons, respectively, in the Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace (National Archives of the United States, 185.115/24).

5 See my chapter, “Great Britain and International Trusteeship: the Historiography of the Mandates System,” in Winks, Robin W. (ed.), The Historiography of the British Empire (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

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7 Smuts, Jan C., The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918)Google Scholar. On Smuts' ideas about mandates, see also SirHancock, Keith, Smuts: The Sanguine Years, 1870–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), Chapters 20 and 21.Google Scholar

8 The main discussions concerning mandates at the Peace Conference may be found in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (13 vols.; Washington, D.C.:U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942–1947), Vols. 3 and 5Google Scholar. See also Stannard Baker, Ray, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (3 vols.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1922)Google Scholar; Lansing, Robert, The Peace Negotiations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921)Google Scholar; Lloyd George, David, The Truth About the Peace Treaties (2 vols.; London: V. Gollancz, 1938)Google Scholar; Hunter Miller, David, “The Origin of the Mandates System,” Foreign Affairs, 01 1928 (Vol. 6, No. 2), pp. 277–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charles, Seymour (ed.), The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (4 vols.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926–1928)Google Scholar; Shotwell, James T., At the Paris Peace Conference (New York: Macmillan, 1937)Google Scholar; and Birdsall, Paul, Versailles Twenty Years After (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941)Google Scholar. Some recent scholarship on this problem includes Haas, Ernst B., “The Reconciliation of Conflicting Colonial Policy Aims: Acceptance of the League of Nations Mandate System,” International Organization, 11 1952 (Vol. 6, No. 4), pp. 521–536CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tillman, Seth P., Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Louis, Wm. Roger, “The United States and the African Peace Settlement of 1919: The Pilgrimage of George Louis Beer,” Journal of African History, 1963 (Vol. 4, No. 3), pp. 413–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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23 See, for example, Morel's, E. D. letter in The Times, 10 5, 1907Google Scholar; and the Official Organ of the Congo Reform Association (Liverpool: Congo Reform Association, October 1907)Google Scholar. This idea seems to have developed substantially through E. D. Morel's correspondence with F. W. Fox in October 1905. ( Morel Papers [London School of Economics].)

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