International Status in the Shadow of Empire

By Cait Storr

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1108498507
• ISBN13: 9781108498500
• Release Date: September 2020
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"