On Good Colonial Government: Lessons from the League of Nations

This article deals with the debate in the Permanent Mandate Commission (League of Nations), during the inter-war period about the best way to rule the dependant territories. It shows how a certain interpretation of the term “good colonial government” came to prevail through the idea of indirect rule, how this idea was seen as the best way to achieve a kind of democratic imperialism (similar to that looked for at the present time in Iraq by the Americans). It analyses the way the mandate system transformed the legitimacy of the colonial powers and the battle it triggered between France and Britain.