The League of Nations Mandates System as a Trans-imperial Arena of (Anti-)Colonialism, 1919-1939

我的项目通过研究他们利用一战后国际机构抵抗殖民主义和建立跨帝国联系的方式，阐明了被殖民人民如何从内部和下面改变全球政治格局。帝国之间的互动长期以来一直是史学上的盲点。这一主题直到最近才作为一个新的研究领域受到调查：跨帝国历史（Hedinger & he<e:1>, 2018; Mizutani, 2019; s<e:1>, 2019）。然而，在超越帝国主义的历史中缺少的是殖民地人民的观点和能动性。特别令人感兴趣和有意义的是两次世界大战期间的授权制度。正是在这种制度下，第一次世界大战的战胜国，包括英国、法国和日本，在国际联盟（LoN）的监督下管理着前德国和奥斯曼帝国的殖民地。这种跨帝国的联系，不同帝国的殖民主义和反殖民主义交织在一起，揭示了晚期帝国世界秩序的本质及其挑战者的战略。将不同帝国的殖民管理国际化，委任制度，最重要的是，允许殖民地人民通过跨越帝国边界向伦敦请愿来抗议殖民主义，这与19世纪帝国内部请愿的模式不同。反映了最近对国际机构和国际主义的兴趣（Jackson & O'Malley, 2018），历史学家认为，委托制度影响了帝国，塑造了民族国家的世界秩序（Pedersen, 2015）。虽然一些学者研究了中东和萨摩亚的授权请愿（Jackson, 2013; Pedersen, 2015），但对授权中的反殖民请愿的研究仍然不足。此外，关于授权之外的反殖民主义者如何参与授权制度的文章很少，尽管他们也就殖民问题向联合国请愿。此外，对殖民地历史上访的研究将其范围和分析框架限制在单个殖民地或帝国（Huzzey & Miller, 2022）。鉴于上访是一种常见的抗议形式，应将向殖民/帝国当局上访和国际机构上访进行对比，以说明两次世界大战之间反殖民要求的动态。我的研究探讨了以下问题：(1)被殖民的人民如何在帝国内部和跨帝国使用上访作为抵抗殖民主义的手段？(2)授权内和授权外的殖民地人民如何看待授权制度并向LoN请愿？(3)殖民地人民在殖民、帝国和国际层面上的请愿和策略存在哪些共性和差异？(4)通过反殖民请愿运动，殖民地人民在殖民/帝国边界内外获得了哪些知识、网络和团结？我的项目通过多语言和多档案研究来回答这些问题。我将分析伦敦文件以及英国、法国和日本的殖民档案和私人文件，通过请愿和帝国对此的回应来探索反殖民政治。我的项目是第一次系统地研究两次世界大战之间跨越帝国边界的反殖民请愿。这项研究不仅展示了帝国之间殖民主义和反殖民主义的纠缠，批评了当代帝国例外论的叙述（s<s:1>, 2021）。它还揭示了殖民主义一直受到殖民地人民向国际社会请愿以及殖民/帝国当局的挑战和质疑，阐明了他们的基层反殖民行动如何重塑了现代政治世界。

My project elucidates how colonised peoples transformed the global political landscape from within and below, by examining the way that they utilised post-WWI international institutions to resist colonialism and make connections across empires.Interactions between empires have long remained a historiographical blind spot. This theme has only recently come under investigation as a new field of research: trans-imperial history (Hedinger & Heé, 2018; Mizutani, 2019; Sèbe, 2019). However, what is missing from trans-imperial history is the viewpoint and agency of colonised peoples. Of particular interest and significance is the mandates system in the interwar period. It was under this regime that the victorious powers of WWI, including Britain, France and Japan, administered the former German and Ottoman colonies under the League of Nations (LoN) oversight. This trans-imperial nexus, where colonialism and anti-colonialism of different empires intersected, reveals the nature of the late imperial world order and the strategies of its challengers. Internationalising the colonial administration of different empires, the mandates system, most importantly, allowed colonised peoples to protest against colonialism by petitioning the LoN across imperial borders, unlike the nineteenth-century mode of intra-imperial petitioning.Reflecting the recent interest in international institutions and internationalism (Jackson & O'Malley, 2018), historians have argued that the mandates system affected empires and shaped a world order of nation-states (Pedersen, 2015). Whilst some scholars have examined petitions from mandates in the Middle East and Samoa (Jackson, 2013; Pedersen, 2015), anti-colonial petitioning in mandates remains under-studied. Furthermore, little has been written on how anti-colonialists outside mandates engaged with the mandates system, although they also petitioned the LoN regarding colonial issues. Moreover, studies on petitioning in colonial history have limited their scope and analytical framework to a single colony or empire (Huzzey & Miller, 2022). Given that petitioning was a common form of protest, petitioning colonial/imperial authorities and petitioning international institutions should be contrasted to illustrate the interwar dynamics of anti-colonial demands.My research explores the following questions:(1) How did colonised peoples employ petitioning as a means of resistance to colonialism in and across empires?(2) How did colonised peoples inside and outside mandates perceive the mandates system and petition the LoN?(3) What commonalities and differences existed amongst colonised peoples' petitions and strategies at colonial, imperial and international levels?(4) What learning, networks, and solidarity did colonised peoples gain within and across colonial/imperial boundaries through anti-colonial petitioning movements?My project answers these questions through multi-lingual and multi-archival research. I will analyse the under-examined LoN documents as well as British, French and Japanese colonial archives and private papers to explore anti-colonial politics through petitioning and imperial responses thereto.My project is the first systematic historical study of interwar anti-colonial petitioning across imperial boundaries. This research not only demonstrates the entanglement of colonialism and anti-colonialism among empires, criticising contemporary narratives of imperial exceptionalism (Sèbe, 2021). It also reveals that colonialism was consistently challenged and contested by colonised peoples petitioning the international society as well as colonial/imperial authorities, illuminating how their grassroots anticolonial activism reshaped the modern political world.