Trusteeship as an Institution of International Society

Abstract

AbstractStarts by pointing out that if the Berlin and Brussels Acts and the experience of the Congo Free State (as discussed in the last chapter) are understood as representing the internationalization of the idea of trusteeship, then the League of Nations mandates system might be understood as representing its institutionalization in international society. Examines the current of ideas from which the institutionalization of trusteeship arose out of the debates concerning the disposal of German colonies conquered during the First World War, and the subsequent compromise that resulted in the creation of the mandates system, which stands as a response to the problem of ordering relations of Europeans and non‐Europeans by reconciling the obligations of trusteeship and the search for national security in a single institutional arrangement. The victorious Allied powers divided Germany's colonial possessions amongst themselves, in no small part for reasons of national security, but in assuming administrative responsibility for these territories they also accepted the oversight of ‘international machinery’ to ensure that the work of civilization was being done. The seven sections of the chapter are: War and the Old Diplomacy; Trusteeship or Annexation?; From the New World—the effect of the Russian revolution and the entry into the First World War of the US on the French and British annexation policy and Woodrow Wilson's ideas for peace; The Mandates System—the birth of the League of Nations; Impasse at Versailles—the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Versailles Peace Treaty; Trusteeship or Deception—the obligations and defects of the League of Nations Covenant; and Novelty and Tradition—the compromise of the League of Nations system.