The Guardians

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. [An] original, stimulating and thoroughly researched examination of how the new League managed to sustain a facade 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 A richly detailed study of the League's Permanent Mandates Commission... Pedersen's book is genuinely revelatory a long disquisition on the politics of unintended consequences, as a bureaucratic system designed to uphold and legitimise imperial reconstruction provided the tools for its undoing. Financial Times, Duncan Kelly The first indispensable book written on a critical subject in 50 years... fair-minded, hard-hitting and readable... The Guardians is a magnificent book. Wall Street Journal (Europe), WM. Roger Louis The Guardians offers many important insights, not least in demonstrating how internationalism deepened when Germany became a commission member and how the UK's governance of Iraq inspired today's system of economic imperialism. The book's primary revelation, however, relates to what the league did not do. Pedersen argues that self-determination, the concept that supposedly underpinned its creation, "was not what the Commission would serve". Its failure to take seriously the demands of its mandated populations initiated a set of forces that would help to forge our unequal world of today. Pedersen's study is nothing less than a groundbreaking account of how one organisation shaped the 20th century. Times Higher Education, Niamh GallagherIntroduction: 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