Mandate

Mandate, originally, contract in ancient Roman law in which one person agreed to perform a gratuitous service for another in return for indemnification against loss. After World War I, the term was applied in international law to provisions under the covenant of the League of Nations for the administration of territories formerly held by Germany and Turkey. The mandate system was formulated as a compromise between the desire of the victorious Allied powers to retain control of conquered areas and their wartime declarations opposing territorial annexation. The territories were placed nominally under the supervision of the League of Nations, and the administration of the mandates was delegated to certain of the victorious powers until the areas could govern themselves. The mandates were divided into three classes, according to the presumed development of their populations in the direction of fitness for self-government.

Class A mandates were established for former Turkish areas that were expected to require supervision for only a few years. Of these, Iraq and Palestine were assigned to the United Kingdom; Iraq achieved independence in 1932, and Palestine, after considerable internal strife, was partitioned in 1948, principally between the states of Israel and Transjordan (later Jordan). Syria and Lebanon were assigned to France; Syria achieved independence in 1936, and Lebanon in 1941.

Class B mandates provided that the supervisory power was responsible for the administration of, and the promotion of the well-being of, the populations involved; these mandates did not envision early independence. Such administrations were established for the former German colonies in central Africa, the present-day independent republics of Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Togo, Cameroon, and the Upper Region and Northern Region of Ghana.

Class C mandates, in which the administering power was permitted to rule the mandated territories as an integral part of its own colonial or territorial system, were established for the entities that now make up Namibia, Papua New Guinea, the independent state of Samoa, and smaller islands in the Pacific Ocean.

After the dissolution of the League of Nations and the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the mandate system was replaced by the trusteeship system supervised by the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations.