Michael D. Callahan - Böcker

The creation of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) at the close of the First World War, and its successor, the United Nations Trusteeship Council (TC), following the Second, were watersheds in the history of modern imperialism. For the first time, the international community had asserted that the well-being of colonial peoples was not merely the private concern of metropolitan states, but a shared responsibility of humankind that transcended national boundaries. Editors R.M. Douglas, Michael D. Callahan, and Elizabeth Bishop have assembled a wide array of scholars to assess the relative weight to be placed on international influence in the process of decolonization. Imperialism on Trial reveals, across a broad cross-section of geographical and political settings, the operation of the complicated and often conflicted dynamic between the national and international dimensions of colonialism in its final and most historically consequential phase.

This book compares the impact of the League of Nations mandates system on British and French rule in the African mandated territories. It examines the mandates system with particular attention to international relations as well as to national politics, the activities of pressure groups, and the bureaucracies of the two largest overseas empires. The book studies developments in international law, international organization, and the powers of the Permanent Mandates Commission. The mandates system not only reflected the changing face of European colonialism, but also played a transforming role in its operation by influencing the economic, political, and cultural lives of Africans and Europeans within the mandated territories. The system led to the development of policies that transformed the relations between Europeans and Africans, and changed the way in which the colonial state exercised power within the mandated territories.

The second volume explains how the League of Nations mandates system fused two of the predominant and compelling global forces of the twentieth century: imperialism and Wilsonian internationalism. After the First World War, Britain and France administered most of Germany's former tropical African colonies as "mandates" under the supervision of the League as "a sacred trust of civilization." This system of international trusteeship changed British and French rule in Africa. In short, "mandates" were not "colonies." Mandates meant less militarism, more commercial equality, a greater emphasis on the interests of Africans, and an end to the extension of European national sovereignty over colonized peoples. Accountability to the League also required the British and French to reconsider traditional economic, strategic, and ideological assumptions about their empires. In the process, the "sacred trust" sowed the seeds of self-doubt about the very purpose and future of European imperialism. The mandates system continued to represent a genuine internationalisation and reformation of colonialism and had long-term economic, political, and cultural consequences for Africans and Europeans within the mandated territories. Despite the Depression, repeated Anglo-French foreign policy failures, growing humiliations for Geneva, and war in Africa and Europe, the principles and practices of international trusteeship proved persistent. Mandates demonstrated the relevance of international law, the importance of the League of Nations, and the impact of Wilsonian principles on international relations and European imperialism.

This book examines the League of Nations, state-supported terrorism, and British foreign policy after the rise of Hitler in the 1930s.