League of Nations Mandate
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Mandates in the Middle east and Africa.
Mandates in the Middle east and Africa.
Mandates in the Pacific.
Mandates in the Pacific.

A League of Nations mandate refers to several territories established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 28 June 1919. It was stipulated at the Yalta Conference that the Mandates should be placed under the Trusteeship of the United Nations, subject to future discussions and formal agreements. Most of the remaining mandates of the League of Nations (with the exception of Palestine and South-West Africa) eventually became United Nations Trust Territories.

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Generalities

All the territories subject to League of Nations mandates were previously controlled by states defeated in World War I, principally Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The mandates were fundamentally different from the protectorates in that the Mandatory power undertook obligations to the inhabitants of the territory and to the League of Nations.

The process of establishing the mandates consisted of two phases:

  1. the formal removal of sovereignty of the previously controlling states
  2. the transfer of mandatory powers to individual states among the Allied Powers.

Treaties

Germany's divestiture of territories was accomplished in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 and allotted to the Allied Powers on May 7, 1919. Ottoman territorial claims were first dispensed with in the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 and later finalized in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. The Turkish territories were allotted to the Allied Powers in the Conference of Sanremo of 1920.

Hidden Agendas and Objections

United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at Paris in 1919. He explained that the system of mandates was a device created by the Great Powers to conceal their division of the spoils of war under the color of international law. If the territories had been ceded directly, the value of the former German and Ottoman possessions would almost certainly have been applied to offset the Allies claims for war reparations. He also explained that Jan Smuts had been the author of the original concept.[1]

The US Senate refused to ratify the Covenant of the League of Nations. Senator Lodge, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee had attached a reservation which read: 'No mandate shall be accepted by the United States under Article 22, Part 1, or any other provision of the treaty of peace with Germany, except by action of the Congress of the United States.'[2] Senator Borah, speaking on behalf on the 'Irreconcilables' stated 'My reservations have not been answered.' He completely rejected the proposed system of Mandates as an illegitimate rule by brute force. [3] Under the plan of the US Constitution, Article 1, the Congress was delegated the power to declare or define the Law of Nations in cases where its terms might be vague or indefinite. The US government subsequently entered into individual treaties to secure legal rights for its citizens, and to protect property rights and businesses interests in the mandates. It did not agree to mutual defense, or pledge itself to maintain the territorial integrity of any mandates.[4]

The Official Journal of the League of Nations, dated June 1922, contained an interview with Lord Balfour in which he explained that the League's authority was strictly limited. The article related that the 'Mandates were not the creation of the League, and they could not in substance be altered by the League. The League's duties were confined to seeing that the specific and detailed terms of the mandates were in accordance with the decisions taken by the Allied and Associated Powers, and that in carrying out these mandates the Mandatory Powers should be under the supervision--not under the control--of the League.'[5]

Types of mandates

The exact level of control by the Mandatory power over each mandate was decided on an individual basis by the League of Nations. However, in every case the Mandatory power was forbidden to construct fortifications or raise an army within the mandate and was required to present an annual report on the territory to the League of Nations.

Despite this, mandates were seen as de facto colonies of the empires of the victor nations.

The mandates were divided into three distinct groups based upon the level of development each population had achieved at that time.

Class A mandates

The first group or Class A mandates were areas formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire deemed to "...have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

The Class A mandates were:

By 1948 these mandates had been replaced or their territory annexed by new monarchies (Iraq, Jordan) and republican governments (Israel, Lebanon, Syria).

Class B mandates

The second group or Class B mandates were all former Schutzgebiete (German territories) in the Sub-saharan regions of West - and Central Africa, which were deemed to require a greater level of control by the mandatory power: "...the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion". The mandatory power was forbidden to construct military or naval bases within the mandates.

The Class B mandates were :

and two former German territories, each split in a British and a French League of Nations mandate territory, according to earlier military occupation zones:

Class C mandates

A final group, the Class C mandates, including South-West Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands, were considered to be "best administered under the laws of the mandatory as integral portions of its territory"

The Class C mandates were former German possessions:

Rules of Establishment

According to the Council of the League of Nations, meeting of August 1920[6]: "draft mandates adopted by the Allied and Associated Powers would not be definitive until they had been considered and approved by the League ... the legal title held by the mandatory Power must be a double one: one conferred by the Principal Powers and the other conferred by the League of Nations,"[7]

Three steps were required to establish a Mandate under international law: (1) The Principal Allied and Associated Powers confer a mandate on one of their number or on a third power; (2) the principal powers officially notify the council of the League of Nations that a certain power has been appointed mandatory for such a certain defined territory; and (3) the council of the League of Nations takes official cognisance of the appointment of the mandatory power and informs the latter that it [the council] considers it as invested with the mandate, and at the same time notifies it of the terms of the mandate, after assertaining whether they are in conformance with the provisions of the covenant."[7][8]

Later history

After the abolition of the League of Nations, all but one of those which remained under the control of a (colonial) power were re-qualified by its successor, the United Nations, as UN Trust territory, a roughly equivalent status, but now vested in victorious colonial powers on the allied side in World War II (Japan, now on the losing side, lost its South Pacific Mandate to the USA).

The only mandate which retained that old status until gaining sovereignty was South-West Africa, which gained independence as Namibia in 1990, after a long guerrilla war of independence against the Apartheid regime of South Africa.

Nearly all the former mandates were sovereign states by 1990, including those which had become UN Trust territories except some successor entities of the gradually dismembered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (formerly Japan's South Pacific Trust Mandate) - notably the Northern Mariana Islands becoming a USA Commonwealth (still administered by a Governor, without their own Head of State, which remains the US President) - while remnant Micronesia and the Marshall islands, the heirs of the last territories of the Trust, attained on 22 December 1990 final independence (the UN Security Council ratified termination of trusteeship, effectively dissolved on 10 July 1987), and the Republic of Palau (split-off from the Federated States of Micronesia) became the last to get its independence effectively on 1 October 1994).

Sources and References

  • Anghie, Antony "Colonialism and the Birth of International Institutions: Sovereignty, Economy, and the Mandate System of the League of Nations" 34(3) New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 513 (2002)
  • WorldStatesmen - links to each present nation

References

  1. ^ Project Gutenberg: The Peace Negotiations by Robert Lansing, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1921, Chapter XIII 'THE SYSTEM OF MANDATES'

    If the advocates of the system intended to avoid through its operation the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a subterfuge which deceived no one. It seemed obvious from the very first that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied mandates over those territories. The League of Nations might reserve in the mandate a right of supervision of administration and even of revocation of authority, but that right would be nominal and of little, if any, real value provided the mandatory was one of the Great Powers as it undoubtedly would be. The almost irresistible conclusion is that the protagonists of the theory saw in it a means of clothing the League of Nations with an apparent usefulness which justified the League by making it the guardian of uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples and the international agent to watch over and prevent any deviation from the principle of equality in the commercial and industrial development of the mandated territories.

    It may appear surprising that the Great Powers so readily gave their support to the new method of obtaining an apparently limited control over the conquered territories, and did not seek to obtain complete sovereignty over them. It is not necessary to look far for a sufficient and very practical reason. If the colonial possessions of Germany had, under the old practice, been divided among the victorious Powers and been ceded to them directly in full sovereignty, Germany might justly have asked that the value of such territorial cessions be applied on any war indemnities to which the Powers were entitled. On the other hand, the League of Nations in the distribution of mandates would presumably do so in the interests of the inhabitants of the colonies and the mandates would be accepted by the Powers as a duty and not to obtain new possessions. Thus under the mandatory system Germany lost her territorial assets, which might have greatly reduced her financial debt to the Allies, while the latter obtained the German colonial possessions without the loss of any of their claims for indemnity. In actual operation the apparent altruism of the mandatory system worked in favor of the selfish and material interests of the Powers which accepted the mandates. And the same may be said of the dismemberment of Turkey. It should not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that the President found little opposition to the adoption of his theory, or, to be more accurate, of the Smuts theory, on the part of the European statesmen.

  2. ^ Henry Cabot Lodge: Reservations with Regard to the Treaty and the League of Nations
  3. ^ Classic Senate Speeches and the Denunciation of the Mandate System, starting on page 7, col. 1
  4. ^ see for example DELAY IN EXCHANGE OF RATIFICATIONS OF THE PALESTINE MANDATE CONVENTION PENDING ADJUSTMENT OF CASES INVOLVING THE CAPITULATORY RIGHTS OF AMERICANS, 1925
  5. ^ Excerpts from League of Nations Official Journal dated June 1922, pp. 546-549
  6. ^ (p109–110)
  7. ^ a b Quincy Wright, Mandates under the League of Nations, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1930.
  8. ^ See also: Temperley, History of the Paris Peace Conference, Vol VI, p505–506; League of Nations, The Mandates System (official publication of 1945); Hill, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, p133ff.
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