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A protectorate, in the context of international relations, is a state that is under protection by another state for defence against aggression and other violations of law. [1] It is a dependent territory that enjoys autonomy over most of its internal affairs, while still recognizing the suzerainty of a more powerful sovereign state without being a possession. [2] [3] [4] In exchange, the protectorate usually accepts specified obligations depending on the terms of their arrangement. [4] Usually protectorates are established de jure by a treaty. [2] [3] Under certain conditions—as with Egypt under British rule (1882–1914)—a state can also be labelled as a de facto protectorate or a veiled protectorate. [5] [6] [7]
A protectorate is different from a colony as it has local rulers, is not directly possessed, and rarely experiences colonization by the suzerain state. [8] [9] A state that is under the protection of another state while retaining its "international personality" is called a "protected state", not a protectorate. [10] [lower-alpha 1]
Protectorates are one of the oldest features of international relations, dating back to the Roman Empire. Civitates foederatae were cities that were subordinate to Rome for their foreign relations. In the Middle Ages, Andorra was a protectorate of France and Spain. Modern protectorate concepts were devised in the nineteenth century. [11]
In practice, a protectorate often has direct foreign relations only with the protector state, and transfers the management of all its more important international affairs to the latter. [12] [4] [2] [3] Similarly, the protectorate rarely takes military action on its own but relies on the protector for its defence. This is distinct from annexation, in that the protector has no formal power to control the internal affairs of the protectorate.
Protectorates differ from League of Nations mandates and their successors, United Nations Trust Territories, whose administration is supervised, in varying degrees, by the international community. A protectorate formally enters into the protection through a bilateral agreement with the protector, while international mandates are stewarded by the world community-representing body, with or without a de facto administering power.
A protected state has a form of protection where it continues to retain an "international personality" and enjoys an agreed amount of independence in conducting its foreign policy. [10] [13]
For political and pragmatic reasons, the protection relationship is not usually advertised, but described with euphemisms such as "an independent state with special treaty relations" with the protecting state. [14] A protected state appears on world maps just as any other independent state. [lower-alpha 1]
International administration of a state can also be regarded as an internationalized form of protection, where the protector is an international organisation rather than a state. [15]
Multiple regions—such as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, the Colony and Protectorate of Lagos, and similar—were subjects of colonial protection. [16] [17] Conditions of protection are generally much less generous for areas of colonial protection. The protectorate was often reduced to a de facto condition similar to a colony, but with the pre-existing native state continuing as the agent of indirect rule. Occasionally, a protectorate was established by another form of indirect rule: a chartered company, which becomes a de facto state in its European home state (but geographically overseas), allowed to be an independent country with its own foreign policy and generally its own armed forces.[ citation needed ]
In fact, protectorates were often declared despite no agreement being duly entered into by the state supposedly being protected, or only agreed to by a party of dubious authority in those states. Colonial protectors frequently decided to reshuffle several protectorates into a new, artificial unit without consulting the protectorates, without being mindful of the theoretical duty of a protector to help maintain a protectorate's status and integrity. The Berlin agreement of February 26, 1885, allowed European colonial powers to establish protectorates in Black Africa (the last region to be divided among them) by diplomatic notification, even without actual possession on the ground. This aspect of history is referred to as the Scramble for Africa. A similar case is the formal use of such terms as colony and protectorate for an amalgamation—convenient only for the colonizer or protector—of adjacent territories, over which it held (de facto) sway by protective or "raw" colonial power.[ citation needed ]
In amical protection—as of United States of the Ionian Islands by Britain—the terms are often very favourable for the protectorate. [18] [19] The political interest of the protector is frequently moral (a matter of accepted moral obligation, prestige, ideology, internal popularity, or dynastic, historical, or ethnocultural ties). Also, the protector's interest is in countering a rival or enemy power—such as preventing the rival from obtaining or maintaining control of areas of strategic importance. This may involve a very weak protectorate surrendering control of its external relations but may not constitute any real sacrifice, as the protectorate may not have been able to have a similar use of them without the protector's strength.
Amical protection was frequently extended by the great powers to other Christian (generally European) states, and to states of no significant importance.[ ambiguous ] After 1815, non-Christian states (such as the Chinese Qing dynasty) also provided amical protection of other, much weaker states.
In modern times, a form of amical protection can be seen as an important or defining feature of microstates. According to the definition proposed by Dumienski (2014): "microstates are modern protected states, i.e. sovereign states that have been able to unilaterally depute certain attributes of sovereignty to larger powers in exchange for benign protection of their political and economic viability against their geographic or demographic constraints". [20]
*protectorates which existed alongside a colony of the same name
Various sultanates in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia): [35] [36] [37]
"Protection" was the formal legal structure under which French colonial forces expanded in Africa between the 1830s and 1900. Almost every pre-existing state that was later part of French West Africa was placed under protectorate status at some point, although direct rule gradually replaced protectorate agreements. Formal ruling structures, or fictive recreations of them, were largely retained—as with the low-level authority figures in the French Cercles—with leaders appointed and removed by French officials. [38]
The German Empire used the word Schutzgebiet, literally protectorate, for all of its colonial possessions until they were lost during World War I, regardless of the actual level of government control. Cases involving indirect rule included:
Before and during World War II, Nazi Germany designated the rump of occupied Czechoslovakia and Denmark as protectorates:
Some sources mention the following territories as de facto Russian protectorates:
After becoming independent nations in 1902 and 1903 respectively, Cuba and Panama became protectorates of the United States. In 1903, Cuba and the U.S. signed the Cuban–American Treaty of Relations, which affirmed the provisions of the Platt Amendment, including that the U.S. had the right to intervene in Cuba to preserve its independence, among other reasons (the Platt Amendment had also been integrated into the 1901 constitution of Cuba). Later that year, Panama and the U.S. signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which established the Panama Canal Zone and gave the U.S. the right to intervene in the cities of Panama and Colón (and the adjacent territories and harbors) for the maintenance of public order. The 1904 constitution of Panama, in Article 136, also gave the U.S. the right to intervene in any part of Panama "to reestablish public peace and constitutional order." Haiti later also became a protectorate after the ratification of the Haitian–American Convention (which gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Haiti for a period of ten years, which was later expanded to twenty years through an additional agreement in 1917) on September 16, 1915.
Some agencies of the United States government, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, refer to the District of Columbia and insular areas of the United States—such as American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands—as protectorates. [57] However, the agency responsible for the administration of those areas, the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) within the United States Department of Interior, uses only the term "insular area" rather than protectorate.
The influence and imperialism of Western Europe and associated states peaked in Asian territories from the colonial period beginning in the 16th century and substantially reducing with 20th century decolonization. It originated in the 15th-century search for trade routes to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia that led directly to the Age of Discovery, and additionally the introduction of early modern warfare into what Europeans first called the East Indies and later the Far East. By the early 16th century, the Age of Sail greatly expanded Western European influence and development of the spice trade under colonialism. European-style colonial empires and imperialism operated in Asia throughout six centuries of colonialism, formally ending with the independence of the Portuguese Empire's last colony Macau in 1999. The empires introduced Western concepts of nation and the multinational state. This article attempts to outline the consequent development of the Western concept of the nation state.
High commissioner is the title of various high-ranking, special executive positions held by a commission of appointment.
The Bechuanaland Protectorate was a protectorate established on 31 March 1885 in Southern Africa by the United Kingdom. It became the Republic of Botswana on 30 September 1966.
A resident minister, or resident for short, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indirect rule.
Togoland was a German Empire protectorate in West Africa from 1884 to 1914, encompassing what is now the nation of Togo and most of what is now the Volta Region of Ghana, approximately 90,400 km2 in size. During the period known as the "Scramble for Africa", the colony was established in 1884 and was gradually extended inland.
The Aden Protectorate was a British protectorate in southern Arabia. The protectorate evolved in the hinterland of the port of Aden and in the Hadhramaut after the conquest of Aden by the Bombay Presidency of British India in January 1839, and which continued until the 1960s. In 1940, it was divided for administrative purposes into the Western Protectorate and the Eastern Protectorate. The territory now forms part of the Republic of Yemen.
A colonial empire is a collective of territories, either contiguous with the imperial center or located overseas, settled by the population of a certain state and governed by that state.
The following is a list of the political history of East Africa.
The Sultanate of Zanzibar, also known as the Zanzibar Sultanate, was an East African Muslim state controlled by the Sultan of Zanzibar, in place between 1856 and 1964. The Sultanate's territories varied over time, and after a period of decline, the state had sovereignty over only the Zanzibar Archipelago and a 16-kilometre-wide (10 mi) strip along the Kenyan coast, with the interior of Kenya constituting the British Kenya Colony and the coastal strip administered as a de facto part of that colony.
The decolonisation of Asia was the gradual growth of independence movements in Asia, leading ultimately to the retreat of foreign powers and the creation of several nation-states in the region.
British protectorates were protectorates—or client states—under protection of the British Empire's armed forces and represented by British diplomats in international arenas, such as the Great Game, in which the Emirate of Afghanistan and the Tibetan Kingdom became protected states for short periods of time. Many territories which became British protectorates already had local rulers with whom the Crown negotiated through treaty, acknowledging their status whilst simultaneously offering protection, e.g. British Paramountcy. British protectorates were therefore governed by indirect rule. In most cases, the local ruler, as well as the subjects of the indigenous ruler were not British subjects. British protected states represented a more loose form of British suzerainty, where the local rulers retained absolute control over the states' internal affairs and the British exercised control over defence and foreign affairs.
But the British Government, established at Delhi since 1803, intervened with an offer of protection to all the CIS-SUTLEJ STATES; and Dhanna Singh gladly availed himself of the promised aid, being one of the first chieftains to accept British protection and control.