A Pithy Question

During the First World War Germany’s colonies and the Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern territories were captured by allied forces, prompting many to conclude that they would be parceled out among the victors. This type of territorial horse-trading, however, had been denounced by US President Woodrow Wilson as incompatible with his vision of a “peace without victory”, prompting vitriolic debates at the Paris Peace Conference. A compromise was reached whereby these territories would have a new status as League of Nations mandates, wherein they would be governed by outside powers under international supervision until it was determined that they were competent to “stand on their own”. One of the key features of this status, particularly in the Middle East, was the provision of commercial equality: the power administering the mandate would give equal trade opportunities to all members of the League of Nations, meaning, in-effect, that all states would receive most favoured nation status in their trade relations with mandated territories.

Among the mandates, Palestine is perhaps most famous owing to conflicts between the Zionist movement and the local Arab population. Over the course of the 1920s orange trees were planted throughout the territory leading to a robust export sector. Oranges were exported into Britain in large quantities at the time from a wide range of sources, including Spain, Italy, Brazil, and the United States. In the early 1930s Britain began experimenting with a series of policies known as Imperial Preference, which granted preferential economic treatment to British territories on a reciprocal basis with the mother country.

Most states were willing to concede that Imperial Preference being extended to Dominions did not violate treaties guaranteeing most favoured nation status with Britain to, among others, the United States. However the mandates proved more contentious in this respect, and Palestine’s oranges were at the center of this debate. The story began in the summer of 1932 with a British enquiry to the governments of France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, and the United States regarding views of the UK extending Imperial Preference to imports from Palestine. The Americans showed the strongest response to these enquiries, the first communication from the British Ambassador to the Secretary of State dated 15 July, 1932 reads:  

“His Majesty’s Government desire to enquire whether the United States Government feel any objection to this proposal, though they do not consider that the United States Government would be entitled under the most-favoured nation provisions of the Convention of Commerce … to claim that Imperial preference should also be extended to goods the produce or manufacture of the United States. At the same time it is of course not proposed that the Government of Palestine should grant a preference to British produce imported into Palestine. I am to add that as regards the degree of preference to be accorded to Palestine it is proposed to grant the preference which is accorded … in certain other mandated territories administered by … the United Kingdom.” [1]

The British were clearly aware that the United States might not like this proposal, and that it challenged the conception of commercial equality embedded into the mandates. Britain showed a certain respect for these provisions by stating that “of course” the government of Palestine will not reciprocate. Of the governments surveyed only the United States registered a complaint regarding the other mandates mentioned.[2] The State Department was apparently unaware that imperial preference had been extended to mandated territories in Africa. This is quite revealing about how the United States viewed the African mandates, which largely went under the radar. This is likely because the United States exported significant quantities of oranges to Britain, which would now face more competition. Whereas the African mandates had very limited exports to Britain, and the British authorities probably concluded that the Americans would not be overly concerned by the preferential status afforded to imports from these territories.

This whole exchange illuminates the place of the mandates in US-UK relations in the early 1930s. There was a clear attempt to undermine key economic provisions of the Palestine mandate through legal mechanisms: Britain considered commercial equality in mandates under its control to apply only for imports and not exports, but for imports into Britain “These territories enjoy the same treatment as British colonies…”[3]

As the exchange went on, Assistant Secretary of State James Grafton Rogers, wrote that  “…the Government of the United States has been unable to perceive any ground upon which Tanganyika, the Cameroons under British mandate, and Togoland under British mandate should, in matters of trade preference, be treated as if they were possessions of the mandatory power.”[4] This was, they clarified, the same as their Palestine policy. The American officials involved seem to have cared only about Imperial Preference in these African territories to the extent that a precedent could be set for the Middle Eastern territories. Rogers said that the United States viewed Palestine as a “foreign country” within the meaning of the terms of the trade treaty between Britain and the United States.[5]

For these to be countries foreign to both Britain and the United States they would have had to have an independent legal existence, but they were governed by colonial powers. This is a question of central importance in understanding the legacies of the post-WWI peace agreements in the Middle East, raised by a minor trade dispute over oranges. It boils down to a question about the status of a mandate under international law. The American position seems to have been that Palestine, like other mandates, was a state-in-waiting. It had an independent legal existence but lacked the capacity to govern itself or to make use of its legal personality to interact with other states. The Americans insisted that these were foreign countries, not colonies, at least for trade purposes. This marks a fundamental shift in the trajectory of colonialism, and one that was not only created by American interference, but one that was maintained by sporadic American attention that kept the mandates outside the boundaries of the British trade empire.

Notes

[1] Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1932, 2: 29-30.

[2]  The National Archives, London. CAB 24-233-31, “Imperial Preference for Palestine”, October 1932, pg. 1-2.

[3] FRUS, 1932, 2: 32.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

IMAGE: MITCHELL LOEB, VISIT PALESTINE (1947). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.