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The First World War threw the imperial order into crisis. New states emerged from the great European land empires, while Germany's African and Pacific colonies, and the Ottoman provinces in the Middle East fell into allied hands. Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, and the British dominions wanted to keep the new states, but Woodrow Wilson and the millions converted to the ideal of self-determination thought otherwise. At the Paris Peace conference of 1919, the allies
agreed reluctantly to govern their new conquests according to international and humanitarian norms and under 'mandate' from the League of Nations.
As The Guardians shows, this decision had enormous consequences. The allies sought to use the League to safeguard imperial authority, but that authority was undermined by the mechanisms for international oversight they had themselves created. Colonial nationalists and humanitarians exploited new rights of petition or opportunities for publicity to expose abuses or scandals; Germans resentful of the loss of their colonies and Italians eager to found a new empire arrived in Geneva to
demand a repartition of the spoils. As imperial politicians wearied of continual scandals and crises - revolts in South West Africa, Syria, Samoa, and Palestine; famine in Rwanda; labour abuses in New Guinea; extortionate oil contracts in Iraq - they began to question whether independent states might be easier
to deal with than territories subject to international scrutiny.
Drawing on research in four continents and dozens of archives, and bringing to life a global network of nationalists, humanitarians, international bureaucrats, and imperial statesmen, The Guardians offers an entirely new interpretation of the importance of international organizations in the emergence of the modern world order.
List of contents
- Introduction: Guardians Assemble
- PART I: Making the Mandates System
- 1: Of Covenants and Carve-ups
- 2: Rules of the Game
- 3: A Whole World Talking
- PART II: Retreat from Self-Determination, 1923-1930
- Preface: Allies and Rivals
- 4: News from the Orange River
- 5: Bombing Damascus
- 6: A Pacific People Says No
- PART III: New Times, New Norms, 1927-1933
- Preface: Enter the Germans
- 7: The struggle over sovereignty
- 8: Market economies or command economies?
- 9: An independence safe for empire
- PART IV: Between Empire and Internationalism, 1933-1939
- Preface: Multiple exits
- 10: Legitimation Crisis
- 11: When empire stopped working
- 12: When internationalism stopped working
- Conclusion: Mandatory Statehood in the Making
About the author
Susan Pedersen was born to Canadian missionary parents and spent her childhood in Japan and Minnesota. Rescued by Harvard at the age of 18, she spent the next 26 years there as a student, faculty member, and sometime Dean for Undergraduate Education. A historian of Britain and Europe with wide interests and an a penchant for far-flung research, she has written on subjects ranging from the history of women's movements, to the origins of welfare states, to British rule in Kenya, Hong Kong, and Palestine. Since 2003, she has been on the faculty at Columbia University, where she teaches courses on British and international history, and on 'great books' from Plato to Nietzsche. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.
Summary
An entirely new account of the transformation of the imperial order after World War I, recovering the crucial role of the League of Nations in setting up international governance of colonial territories seized from the defeated powers, and showing how the actions of the League shaped the modern world of nation states.
Additional text
provides an enlightening, insightful, richly textured exposé of the Mandates Commission from birth to transformation under the United Nations. Her multi-archival, international, superbly footnoted, and, at its core, personality driven narrative brings alive an institution ... the author's highly engaging narrative style makes the book fly by as if it were a summer beach read. Extremely readable, richly informative, and boldly argued.
Report
[An] original, stimulating and thoroughly researched examination of how the new League managed to sustain a façade of trusteeship in a world of selfish imperial interests... This is a fascinating examination of empire in its final death throes. Literary Review, Richard Overy
