International Status in the Shadow of Empire

Nauru and the Histories of International Law

Cait Storr

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781108597937
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• 1 International Status, Imperial Form: Nauru and the Histories of International Law
• 2 From Trading Post to Protectorate, 1888
• 3 From Protectorate to Colony to Mandate, 1920
• 4 From Mandate to Trust Territory, 1947
• 5 From Trust Territory to Sovereign State, 1968
• 6 After Independence: Sovereign Status and the Republic of Nauru
• Bibliography
• Index