On 20 July 1922 the war-time division between Great Britain and France of the former German colony of Kamerun in west Africa was formally confirmed. However, instead of being annexed, the two portions of Cameroon joined fourteen other territories in the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, in becoming League of Nations mandates. This thesis examines the assertion that during the inter-war years, the two leading League powers, Britain and France, would seek to interpret and apply the mandates system in their territories in a manner which best suited their perceived national interests. In so doing, they did not live up to the high ideals on which the mandates system was supposedly created and they also failed to abide by the legal obligations they had voluntarily undertaken. Part 1 examines the emergence of the mandates system and the League of Nations' machinery for supervising mandated territories. It shows how the mandates system, with all its high-minded commitments, was borne in the highly-charged political environment of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Part 2 of the thesis provides case studies of the two Cameroon mandates, from their war-time partition between France and Britain, through their transition into League of Nations mandates, and the administration thereof.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:395851 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Ntamark, George B. Y. |
| Publisher | Keele University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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