Mandates

Mandates were the League’s most explicit intervention in racial affairs. They were a legal status applied to the former colonies of Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire after their defeat in the First World War. Under the Covenant these territories, “inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world”, were administered by more ‘advanced’ states on behalf of the League.

The League required mandates to be governed in the best interests of their inhabitants with the ultimate aim of self-government. In that spirit, three classes of mandate were created (A, B and C) distinguished by a region’s stage of development and overseen by the Permanent Mandates Commission in Geneva.

Relatively few people were governed under mandates. Yet, the underlying principles of international protection and tutelage were symbolic of the League’s belief that enlightened global governance would deliver racial uplift.

Various cartographic approaches were used to visually distinguish mandates from other European possessions in Africa. On the ground, however, mandates were governed akin to colonies, with no discernible progress towards self-government. Critics argue that mandates sustained the moral justification for empire in the face of growing anti-colonial unrest.