Full Description:
The system of colonial administration authorized by the League of NationsLeague of Nations Full Description:The first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its spectacular failure to prevent the aggression of the Axis powers provided the negative blueprint for the United Nations, influencing the decision to prioritize enforcement power over pure idealism. The League of Nations was the precursor to the UN, established after the First World War. Founded on the principle of collective security, it relied on moral persuasion and unanimous voting. It ultimately collapsed because it lacked an armed force and, crucially, the United States never joined, rendering it toothless in the face of expansionist empires. Critical Perspective:The shadow of the League looms over the UN. The founders of the UN viewed the League as “too democratic” and ineffective because it treated all nations as relatively equal. Consequently, the UN was designed specifically to correct this “error” by empowering the Great Powers (via the Security Council) to police the world, effectively sacrificing sovereign equality for the sake of stability.
Read more, granting Britain governance over the territory of Palestine following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was during this period that the infrastructure for the future conflict was laid. The British Mandate was a “trusteeship” that governed the region for three decades. The British administration was tasked with a “dual obligation”: to facilitate the establishment of a “Jewish national home” (as promised in the Balfour Declaration) while ostensibly protecting the civil rights of the “non-Jewish communities” (the Arab majority).

Critical Perspective:
The Mandate represents the failure of imperial management. Britain made contradictory promises to both Arabs and Jews to secure wartime support, creating a situation where two distinct national movements were competing for the same territory under the umbrella of a single colonial state. When the violence became unmanageable and the empire’s resources waned, Britain withdrew, leaving a vacuum that led immediately to war.