Abstract
The League of Nations and the United Nations advocated clear, ethical principles to govern relations between the great powers and developing nations. These principles reflected the different political eras in which these international governments were founded, the first in the high era of European imperialism, and the second in the era of imperial decline that presaged the Cold War and decolonization. The League employed a decidedly imperial discourse, ranking people in a cultural hierarchy that ascended from savagery to civilization. According to the League’s covenant, trusteeship was the fundamental principle that defined an ethical relationship between the civilized and the savage. This ‘sacred trust’ was premised upon paternalism, capitalist development, the intrinsic sovereignty of colonial nations, and the trustee’s commitment to relinquish power when the colonial wards had become civilized and thus capable of governing themselves. By contrast, the United Nations discarded the idiom of civilization and savagery.
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Notes
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Grant, K. (2007). Human rights and sovereign abolitions of slavery, c. 1885–1956. In: Grant, K., Levine, P., Trentmann, F. (eds) Beyond sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230626522_5
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