2020/08/20 by Cait Storr · 44 citations
Social Sciences · Environmental Science · #International Law and Human Rights #International Maritime Law Issues #Global Peace and Security Dynamics #Jurisdiction #Sovereignty #State (computer science) #Empire #Decolonization #Law #Order (exchange) #Protectorate #Independence (probability theory) #Mandate #Bureaucracy #Political science #Shadow (psychology) #Sovereign state #History #Colonialism #Ancient history
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/9781108682602
published in Cambridge University Press eBooks (Cambridge University Press)
openalex created_date 2020/05/21 · openalex publication_date 2020/08/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Nauru is often figured as an anomaly in the international order. This book offers a new account of Nauru's imperial history and examines its significance to the histories of international law. Drawing on theories of jurisdiction and bureaucracy, it reconstructs four shifts in Nauru's status – from German protectorate, to League of Nations C Mandate, to UN Trust Territory, to sovereign state – as a means of redescribing the transition from the nineteenth century imperial order to the twentieth century state system. The book argues that as international status shifts, imperial form accretes: as Nauru's status shifted, what occurred at the local level was a gradual process of bureaucratisation. Two conclusions emerge from this argument. The first is that imperial administration in Nauru produced the Republic's post-independence 'failures'. The second is that international recognition of sovereign status is best understood as marking a beginning, not an end, of the process of decolonisation.