The Mandate for Mesopotamia and the Principle of Trusteeship in English Law

by D. Campbell Lee


A hat tip to Salubrius for bringing this document to our attention.

Below is the first paragraph from a lecture explaining the legal framework for the concept of Mandate and Trusteeship, developed for the first time at the end of the First World War. 


"When the first part of the Treaty of Peace with Germany was given to the world in 1919, publicists at once perceived that a new idea in International Law was embodied in Article XXII. This now famous Article of the Covenant of the League of Nations applied a status altogether novel to certain portions of the Globe and to the peoples inhabiting them. Those portions before the War were colonies and territories enjoying the blessings of administration of German or Turkey, as the case might be. Instead of parcelling out these lands to the Allied and Associated Powers for annexation, the Versailles statesmen - I am bold enough in these times of cynicism to use the term - created a new status. They created an international trust or mandate given to a particular State on behalf of the League of Nations. The colonies and territories are, in the language of Article XXII., those

'which as a consequence of the late War have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them, and are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.'

The document can be read in full at The Mandate for Mesopotamia and the Principle of Trusteeship in English Law

D. Campbell Lee, M.A. LL.B

Source: http://archive.org/stream/cu31924052878265#page/n3/mode/2up

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.