Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law Part 6 doc

174 imperialism, sovereignty and international law

a colony, economic forces had a profound impact on native society that

hardly could be reversed by the actions of the colonial government, no

matter how solicitous and well intended. Social relations were trans￾formed purely into economic relations, political authority became a

means by which the market could be furthered, and with the dissolution

of the traditional checks on behaviour ‘there remain[ed] no embodiment

of social will or representative of public welfare to control the economic

forces which the impact of the West release[d]’.231 Political advancement

and independence hardly became a reality in these circumstances.

It was not only the systems of governance that were dictated by eco￾nomic goals. The old model of colonialism suggested that economic

progress was an end in itself and that welfare would be achieved by

progress. The new model suggested instead that active state intervention

was necessary to achieve welfare.232 Native welfare was a principal preoc￾cupation of enlightened colonial administrators and the PMC. And yet, as

Lugard’s own comments suggest, such concerns were entirely utilitarian:

labour was an asset that had to be preserved.233 Given the decisive impor￾tance of economic development to the whole project of colonial gov￾ernance, it followed that economic development almost inevitably dis￾torted the policies intended to protect native welfare. Thus, as Furnivall

points out: ‘[T]he services intended to furnish the necessary protection

function[ed] mainly to make production more efficient, and the services

intended to promote welfare directly by improving health and education

[had] a similar result; though designed as instruments of human welfare

they [were] perverted into instruments of economic progress.’234

Economic development is crucial to the well being of any society. In

this situation, however, economic progress was equated with the fur￾therance of a system of economic inequalities specific to colonialism.

Analysing colonial economies in the period more generally, Abernethy

soberly concludes that colonial economies were export oriented and spe￾cialised in the production of a few commodities. Furthermore, the sys￾tematic integration of the colonial economy into the metropolitan econ￾omy on disadvantageous terms created even greater ties of dependency

and vulnerability in the colony.235 In addition, of course, the native

231 Ibid., p. 298. Furnivall’s detailed and lucid exposition of the effect of individualism

and market forces on traditional societies is all the more powerful for its notable lack

of sentimentality or nostalgia for vanishing village communities. Ibid., pp. 297--299. 232 See Furnivall, Colonial Policy, p. 288. 233 See the discussion above. 234 Furnivall, Colonial Policy, p. 410. 235 As Abernethy soberly states: ‘Because of such policies, the typical colony’s economic

prospects were unusually dependent on forces operating outside its boundaries and

beyond its control.’ Abernethy, The Dynamics, p. 114.

t h e m a n da t e s y s t e m o f t h e l e ag u e o f n a t i o n s 175

peoples hardly received the real value of the raw materials extracted

from their territories.236

But these were not the only reasons why economic development had a

devastating impact on native societies. Rather, the dominance of the eco￾nomic, as discussed, profoundly altered the whole system of legitimacy,

of authority, and of the meaning that held mandate societies together.

The doctor and anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers, intent on identifying the

cause of the massive population declines in Melanesia that accompanied

the introduction of civilization to that region, argued that

[i]t may at first sight seem far-fetched to suppose that such a factor as loss of

interest in life could ever produce the dying out of a people, but my own observa￾tions have led me to the conclusion that its influence is so great that it can

hardly be overrated.237

My argument has been that the economic and social policies actively

endorsed by the PMC had profoundly damaging consequences for man￾date peoples. It also must be noted, however, that in many instances,

the PMC was unable to check abuses of the system by the mandatory

powers themselves. Native cultures, as I have argued earlier, possessed

no inherent validity for the PMC, but the PMC did recognize the impor￾tance of at least getting some impression of native views and responses.

The Mandate System, however, failed to provide any formal mechanism

by which the native could communicate meaningfully with, and rep￾resent herself before, the PMC. In basic terms, the native was spoken

for by the mandatory power. Initially, Smuts argued for some native

236 See generally Woolf, Empire; Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The topic of the

economics of imperialism raises very complex questions. For a recent account see,

e.g., B. R. Tomlinson, ‘Economics and Empire: The Periphery and the Imperial

Economy’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth

Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 53--75. But focusing on a specific

Mandate Territory, it was estimated that the three administering trustee powers

(Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) made a profit of about 165 million

pounds from the exploitation of Nauru’s phosphates while Nauru was a mandate and

then a trust territory. For a detailed study of accounting issues relating to Nauru, see

Weeramantry, Nauru, chapters 13, 16. Some idea of the scale of exploitation is

suggested by the fact that in 1928, the people of Nauru received 2.6 per cent of the

value of their phosphates. Ibid. at p. 235. It is likely that studies of the economies of

other mandate territories such as Rwanda--Urundi would reveal similar, if not worse

levels of exploitation and profiteering by the mandate power. 237 W. H. R. Rivers, ‘The Psychological Factor’, in W. H. R. Rivers (ed.), Essays on the

Depopulation of Melanesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), pp. 84, 94.

Rivers’ work was discussed by the PMC. He is a central character in Pat Barker’s superb

Regeneration trilogy of novels -- Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road.

176 imperialism, sovereignty and international law

representation, at least to the extent of consulting the natives as to

whether or not they were agreeable to the mandatory chosen. Only

the advanced mandates participated in this process. For the rest, Smuts

argued, consultation was simply inapplicable, on account of the back￾wardness of the peoples concerned.238 The PMC attempted to establish a

system by which petitions from the natives themselves could be received.

The subject of petitions was treated, however, as a delicate one, liable to

generate great tensions.239 The compromise formula, arrived at in 1923,

permitted the PMC to receive petitions from inhabitants of the mandate

territories, but only through the mandatory, which appended comments

prior to sending the petitions on to the Commission.240

The peoples of the mandate territories inevitably resisted the profound

changes being made to their societies and ways of life. The people of

Nauru, for instance, attempted in a number of different ways to prevent

the phosphate mining that was destroying their island. Tragically, how￾ever, given the various limitations of the petition system, the actions of

these peoples, at least at the international level, became largely what

they were represented to be by the mandatory powers.

The ironies are made clear by the 1922 Bondelzwart riots in South￾West Africa, which -- certain members of the PMC observed with

the restraint of seasoned diplomats -- could be attributed to ‘native

grievances arising in part from legislative and administrative action in

behalf of the white settlers’.241

Political and procedural factors -- the PMC’s practice of giving the

mandatory large discretion when the issues involved were those relating

to security -- largely precluded PMC criticism of the measures adopted.242

Indeed, the Commission, as reported by Wright, partially commended

the South African response ‘“in taking prompt and effective steps to

uphold government authority and to prevent the spread of disaffec￾tion”, though because of the absence of native evidence no opinion could

be expressed, “whether these operations were conducted with needless

severity”.’243

Within this system, native discontent could express itself only as

rebellion, the meaning of which was interpreted and established by the

League. The PMC response to the rebellion, however, simply confirmed

238 See Smuts, ‘The League of Nations’, p. 28. 239 Wright, Mandates, pp. 169--178. 240 Ibid., p. 169. 241 Ibid., p. 209. 242 Ibid. 243 Wright, Mandates, p. 198 (citing the PMC’s statement from the Third Session).