Protectorate

1960 Seal of the Bechuanaland Protectorate.

Protectorate can be defined, in international law, as a modality of territorial administration in which, by means of a treaty between one or several protector states and a sovereign state or a political entity that does not it becomes so due to its scarce institutionalization or sovereignty (such as a tribal group or a feudal principality), it agrees that one or those may exercise their protection to varying degrees, in particular, in relation to military defense and the maintenance of internal order.

In other words, it is a state, form of government or territory that is diplomatically or militarily protected by a stronger state or international entity. In exchange for that protection, the protectorate accepts some specified obligations, which vary depending on the actual nature of the relationship between the two entities. In legal fiction, a protectorate is recognized as at least potentially an autonomous state and usually maintains some measure of sovereignty or forms of native rule and administration. It is a dependent territory that has been granted local autonomy over most internal affairs, while still recognizing the sovereignty of a more powerful sovereign state without being its direct possession. In return, the protectorate generally accepts specific obligations depending on the terms of your arrangement. Protectorates are generally established de jure by treaty. Under certain conditions beginning with Egypt under British rule (1882-1914) for example, a state may also be labeled as a de facto protectorate or a "veiled protectorate".

In general it is considered that a protectorate is an instrument at the service of the strategic, economic or military interests of the great powers; a legalized institution or formulation for the legitimization of hierarchical or power relations between states or national entities: "The protectorate always has a colonial tendency, if it is not in itself colonial, of exploitation, of profit."

A protectorate is different from a colony in that they have local rulers, are not directly owned, and rarely experience colonization by the sovereign state. A state that is under the protection of another state while retaining its "international personality" it is called a protected state, not a protectorate.

Typology

Foreign Relations

In practice, a protectorate often has direct foreign relations only with and transfers management of all its major international affairs to the protector. Similarly, the protectorate rarely undertakes military action alone, but depends on the protector for his defense. This differs from annexation in that the protector has no formal power to control the internal affairs of the protectorate.

Protectorates differ from the mandates of the League of Nations and its successors, the United Nations Trust Territories, whose administration is overseen, to varying degrees, by the international community. A protectorate formally enters protection through a bilateral agreement with the protector, while international mandates are administered by the body representing the world community, with or without a de facto administering power.

Protected status

A protected status has a form of protection in which it continues to retain an "international personality" and enjoys an agreed amount of independence in the conduct of its foreign policy. For political and pragmatic reasons, the protective relationship is generally not advertised, but described in euphemisms as "an independent state with special treaty relations" with protective status. [13] A protected state appears on world maps like any other independent state.

The international administration of a state can also be considered as an internationalized form of protection, where the protector is an international organization rather than a state.

Colonial Protection

Multiple regions such as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, the Colony and Protectorate of Lagos and the like were subject to colonial protection. Conditions relating to protection are generally much less generous for areas of colonial protection. The protectorate was often reduced to a de facto colony-like status, but the pre-existing native state continued as the agent of indirect rule. Occasionally, a protectorate was established by another form of indirect rule: a chartered company, becoming a de facto state in its European home state (but geographically abroad), allowed to be an independent country with its own foreign policy, and In general, their own armed forces.

Indeed, protectorates were declared despite not having been duly executed by the supposedly protected traditional states, or only by a party of dubious authority in those states. Colonial protectorates frequently decided to reorganize several protectorates into a new artificial unit without consulting the protectorates, a logic disrespectful of a protector's theoretical duty to help maintain the status and integrity of its protectorates. The Berlin agreement of February 26, 1885 allowed the European colonial powers to establish protectorates in Black Africa (the last region to be divided between them) by diplomatic notification, even without actual possession of the land. This aspect of the story is known as the Scramble for Africa. A similar case is the formal use of terms such as colony and protectorate for an amalgamation, suitable only for the colonizer or protector, of adjacent territories, over which he dominated (de facto) by protective or "raw" colonial logic;.

Friendly protection

In friendly protection such as the United States of the Ionian Islands by Great Britain, the terms are often very favorable to the protectorate. The protector's political interest is frequently moral (a matter of accepted moral obligation, prestige, ideology, internal popularity or dynastic, historical or ethnocultural ties). Furthermore, the protector's interest is to counter a rival or enemy power, such as preventing the rival from gaining or maintaining control of areas of strategic importance. This may involve a very weak protectorate giving up control of its external relations, but it may not constitute a real sacrifice, since the protectorate may not have been able to make similar use of them without the protector's strength.

Great powers frequently extended friendly protection to other (usually European) Christian states and to smaller states that were not of significant importance. After 1815, non-Christian states (such as the Chinese Qing dynasty) also provided friendly protection to other, much weaker states.

In modern times, a form of amical protection can be seen as an important or defining characteristic of microstates. According to the definition proposed by Dumienski (2014): "microstates are protected modern states, that is, sovereign states that have been able to unilaterally delegate certain attributes of sovereignty to larger powers in exchange for benign protection of their political viability and economy in the face of its demographic limitations ".

Indirect rule and British decolonization

The British made extensive use of this system of indirect rule to administer their vast colonial empire. In fact, it was more economical to leave the existing institutions in place and add one or more "advisers" British than to replace them with a colonial administration. At the time of decolonization, the princely states of the Indian Empire were willingly or forcibly integrated into the new entities, India and Pakistan, except for Sikkim (Indian protectorate until its full annexation in 1975) and Bhutan (same status as Sikkim, but which finally gained independence in 1971). Kashmir was not immediately annexed either, it was militarily occupied by India and formally annexed in 1957 only, the Pakistan-occupied part remaining in an independent state of law, Azad Kashmir (Free Kashmir), which can be considered one of dependent protectorate Pakistan, as well as the northern territories, Gilgit and Baltistan.

The same happened in sub-Saharan Africa, with two exceptions: the protectorate of Basutoland, an enclave of South Africa, which became an independent kingdom in 1966 under the name of Lesotho, as well as that of Swaziland (1968), in the same region. Bechuanaland, still in southern Africa, achieved independence as a republic in 1966 under the name of Botswana, but with the heir to the previously protected royal family, Seretse Khama, as president.

In the Pacific Ocean, the Protectorate of Tonga also became independent in 1970 without changing its institutions.

In the Arabian Peninsula, with the exception of South Yemen (former Aden Protectorate and Aden Colony, Federation of South Arab Emirates, South Arabia Protectorate and Federation of South Arabia), British protectorates were granted independence, either separately (Kuwait in 1961 and Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in 1971) or as a federation (United Arab Emirates in 1971).

The British tried at least three experiments with federations of protectorates, one of which was aborted, the Federation of the United Arab Emirates in 1959, which became the Federation of South Arabia in 1962 but dissolved in the the new People's Republic of South Yemen in 1967, after the other two federations of monarchies, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, still exist today as independent states, the former with nine monarchies and four territories, the latter with seven monarchies.

End of protectorates

The legal regime of the protectorate no longer officially exists, as all protectorates have been integrated into new entities or have become independent.

The protectorate regime should not be confused with the mandate regime applied, after World War I, to certain former Ottoman territories (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq) and German colonies (Togo, Cameroon, South West Africa, Rwanda-Burundi, Tanganyika, Marshall Islands, Western Samoa, Nauru), on behalf of the League of Nations, and after 1945 under the name of the United Nations Trust (UN), which added to the mandates on the former German colonies the Italian colonies of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia, as well as the Japanese colonies in Micronesia, the sub-trust of the Pacific islands (present-day states of the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia).