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Woodrow Wilson's Colonial Emissary: Edward M. House And The Origins Of The Mandate System, 1917-1919, Scot D. Bruce

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

After World War I, reallocating the former German and Turkish colonies proved to be one of the more challenging feats of the peace process. After months of negotiation in 1919, first in Paris, then in London, the various national leaders agreed to create the mandate system, which proved to be a compromise between outright colonial expansion and genuine independence, whereby the former German and Turkish colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were mandated to the conquering nations in trust until the indigenous peoples were deemed ready to administer their own governments and societies. For decades, the mandate system …