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The United States and the African Peace Settlement of 1919: The Pilgrimage of George Louis Beer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Wm. Roger Louis
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Extract

‘It has constantly been asserted that the determining principle … should be the welfare of the natives.’

GEORGE LOUIS BEER, American Colonial Delegate to the Paris Peace Conference.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 1963 , pp. 413 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

1 Beer to E. M. House, 21 July 1919, House papers, Yale University.Google Scholar

2 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919: the Paris Peace Conference, III, 775.Google Scholar

3 ‘What sharply distinguishes the mandatory system from all such international arrangements of the past is the unqualified right of intervention possessed by the League of Nations.’ Beer, G. L., in Temperley, H. W. V. (ed.), A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, 6 vols. (London, 1920), II, 236.Google Scholar

4 See especially Moon, Parker Thomas, Imperialism and World Politics (New York, 1926), chap. XVIII.Google Scholar

5 Lugard, F. D., The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh and London, 1929), 48–51; for Beer's views on international control in Africa, see part III of his African Questions at the Paris Peace Conference, Louis Herbert Gray (ed.) (New York, 1923), which is a collection of memoranda by Beer written for the Commission of Inquiry.Google ScholarCf. Miller, David Hunter, ‘The Origin of the Mandates System’, Foreign Affairs, 6, (01, 1928), 277–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCf. also the remarks of Professor Stengers: ‘Dans la controverse entre Léopold II et l'Angleterre, ilyaun point, à mon avis—etc'est d'ailleurs peut-être le seul—oú Léopold II avait raison : c'est lorsqu'il soutenait que l'origine de l'Etat du Congo, juridiquement, n'avait rien á voir avec l'Acte de Berlin, et que l'Etat du Congo n'était en rien un Etat “international”. Sur ce terrain juridique, je le répète, Léopold II avait à mon sens raison à 100% et ce qu'écrit Lugard ne tient pas. D'un point de vue purement historique, d'autre part, je puis vous dire qu'après avoir lu tout l'essentiel des documents diplomatiques, publiés et inédits, relatif à la Conférence de Berlin, je ne trouve nulle part l'idée d'un “mandat”, d'un “international trusteeship” en 1884–1885. Ce n'est pas, à mon sens, une idée de l'époque. C'est une idée née au début du XXe siècle chez ceux qui ont quinze ans après, interprété l'Acte de Berlin.’ (In a letter to the present writer of I March 1963.) However erroneous the interpretation of the Berlin Act by the Congo reformers may have been, it is clear that ‘King Leopold [as] the greatest “fraudulent trustee” whom the world had seen.…’ (Official Organ of the Congo Reform Association (Nov., 1907)) was in the minds of those who conceived of the mandates system during the First World War. Discussing the ‘neutralization and internationalization’ of tropical Africa, E. D. Morel (who had led the anti-Congo campaign in Britain) wrote in 1917 that his proposals were ‘substantially an amplification and precision of the purposes of the Berlin Act’ (Africa and the Peace of Europe (London, 1917); Morel's emphasis). I hope to discuss in snore detail the relation between the Berlin Act and the mandates system in another paper.Google Scholar

6 See below, pp. 432–3.Google Scholar

7 In George Louis Beer: A tribute to his life and work in the making of History and Moulding of Public Opinion (New York, 1924; this book is a memorial volume published after Beer's death), 86.Google Scholar

8 Potter, Pitman B., ‘Origin of the System of Mandates under the League of Nations’, American Political Science Review, 16 (11 1922), 583; cf.: Potter's ‘Further Notes’,CrossRefGoogle ScholarIbid. 20 (Nov. 1926), 842–6; Luther H. Evans, ‘Some Legal and Historical Antecedents of the Mandatory System’, Proceedings of the Southwestern Political Science Association (March 1924); David Hunter Miller, ‘The Origin of the Mandates System’; Wright, Quincy, Mandates Under the League of Nations (Chicago, 1930), chap. I and II;Google Scholarvan Maanen-Helmer, Elizabeth, The Mandates System … (London, 1929), chap. II;Google ScholarHaas, Ernest B., ‘The Reconciliation of Conflicting Colonial Policy Aims: Acceptance of the League of Nations Mandate System’, International Organization, 4 (11 1952), 525–36; andGoogle ScholarTillman, Seth P., Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Princeton, 1961), chap. III.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Smuts, Jan C., The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (London, 1918). Smuts did not intend the mandates scheme to be applied to Africa;Google Scholar cf. Sir Hancock, Keith, Smuts: The Sanguine Years, 1870–1919 (Cambridge, 1962), 501–2, 507, 543–4.Google Scholar

10 Baker, Ray Stannard, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, 3 vols. (New York, 1922), 1, 265–6.Google Scholar

11 Winkler, Henry R., The League of Nations Movement in Great Britain, 1914–1919 (New Brunswick, 1952); chap. VIII of this work is a full discussion of the ‘Idea of Colonial Trusteeship’ in Britain during the war, correcting the erroneous impression that the Round Table group carried the burden of campaigning for international trusteeship. See especially 205.Google Scholar

12 But which was written by the editor, Lionel Curtis.Google Scholar

13 1X, 1–47.Google Scholar

14 Shotwell, James T., At the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1937), 90, n. 2.Google Scholar

15 ‘Windows of Freedom’, 35–6. The German East Africa proposal was Curtis's, not Beer's, idea. Cf. below, pp. 417–20.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. 26.

17 Typescript copy of Beer's, G. L. manuscript diary, deposited in the Library of Congress; 5 Apr. 1919.Google Scholar

18 Wilson's fifth point; cf. the Cobb-Lippmann memorandum in Rudin, Harry R., Armistice, 1918 (New Haven, 1944), 414–15.Google Scholar

19 See especially Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference, chap. I; also Mezes, Sidney Edward, ‘Preparations for Peace’, in House, E. M. and Seymour, Charles (eds.), What Really Happened at Paris (New York, 1921), 1–14. The scholarly ‘Inquiry’ group, many of whom were academics, was unkindly regarded by the State Department as a dangerous rival, and at the beginning of the Peace Conference its position was entirely uncertain. Beer recorded with relief in his diary on 22 Dec. 1918: ‘Our position on [the] Inquiry has been greatly strengthened and virtually the entire burden of giving information has been thrust upon us; [the] President seems to regard us as his personal staff.’Google Scholar

20 Bailey, Thomas A., Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (New York, 1944), 83.Google Scholar

21 Zimmern, A. E., in George Louis Beer, 54.Google Scholar

22 Beer's Diary, 9, Dec. 1918.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. 10 Dec. 1918.

24 Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference, 75; cf. Birdsall, Paul, Versailles Twenty Years After (New York, 1941), 42: ‘… the proposal to entrust colonial administration to small states was a desperate device to avoid even the semblance of a division of spoils at the Peace Conference.’Google Scholar

25 Shotwell, 90, n. 2. Cf. Professor Gaddis Smith's remarks: ‘This idea was also strenuously championed by Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden and other Canadians. Borden was distressed at the idea that the British Empire would come out of the war with vast reaches of new territory. At the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 and 1918, but especially in 1918, Borden was a vocal anti-annexationist. He wanted the United States to have African mandates (I) to relieve the British Empire of the onus of territorial gain; (2) to give the United States a specific job to do and thus help bind the United States to the British Empire, and the postwar international organization.’ In a letter to the present writer of 13 September 1963.Google Scholar

26 Diary, 22 Dec. 1918.Google Scholar

27 … [the] President has done no work since [his] arrival … there has been no meeting of [the] commissioners at which [the] President expressed himself on fundamental questions of policy—in fact, no such meeting at all. This explains General Bliss's ignorance of [the] President's attitude towards international administration and his ideas of a mandatory under [the] League of Nations in his Conversation with me and Curtis.’ (Diary, 24 Dec. 1918.) ‘[Bliss] … is evidently of the opinion that [the] U.S.A. should not mix up in the details of the European and colonial settlements beyond seeing that American principles are not violated and the U.S.A. should under [the] League of Nations be responsible for order in the western hemisphere.’ Diary, 15 Jan. 1919.Google Scholar

28 Beer's closest association with House was through the Mandates Commission, to which House was the American delegate and Beer the alternate delegate. The following revealing passage is recorded in Beer's Diary on 7–13 July 1919. ‘Although House was very modest and said very little, allowing me to do all the talking, his presence was a handicap and I am sure that I could have accomplished more had he not been present. He is inclined to give in rapidly and to defer to Milner and Cecil. I never felt sure that he would not leave me in the lurch and could not devote my undivided attention to the work and the argument.’Google Scholar

29 Diary, 29 Jan. 1919.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. 11 Jan.

31 Aubert was Director of the Service of Research and Information in the Commission on Franco-American Affairs of War.Google Scholar

32 Diary, 11 Jan.Google Scholar

33 Ibid. 14 Jan.

34 Ibid. 16 Jan.

35 Ibid. 30 Jan.

36 Ibid. 28 Jan.

37 Ibid. 29 Jan.

38 Ibid. 28 Jan.

39 Or at least this was Beer's inference; cf. Foreign Relations, III (1920), 788 and 80.Google Scholar

40 Diary, 30 Jan.Google Scholar

41 Ibid. 30 Jan.

42 ‘… [Simon] is a southerner, rather testy, of sharp temper, but business-like and does not make speeches. His manner is quite vehement.’ Ibid. 13 July–4 Aug

43 Ibid. 1 Feb.

44 Ibid. 5 Feb.

45 ‘…our taking the Cameroons—soon revealed its utter impossibility, but it should be mentioned now in passing to show how far away from subsequent tendencies were even some of the clearest-sighted men of that day. The flush of promise had not yet faded from all our war-time ideals.’ Shotwell, in George Louis Beer, 102–3.Google Scholar

46 See the paraphrases of the Anglo-French agreements of 13 Sep. 5914 and 28 Feb. 1916, for Togo and the Cameroons respectively, in the Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, National Archives of the United States, 185.115/24.Google ScholarMargery, Perham throws some light on this dark subject in Lugard, 2 vols. (London, 1956–1960), II, 5445; see alsoGoogle ScholarGeorge's, LloydMemoirs of the Peace Conference 2 vols. (New Haven, 1939), 1, 71.Google Scholar

47 Foreign Relations, III, 718.Google Scholar

48 Diary, 28 Jan.Google Scholar

49 Many of the works listed in n. 8 deal with this subject in detail, but see especially Birdsall, Versailles Twenty Years After, chap. II and III.Google Scholar

50 Diary, 24 Jan.Google Scholar

51 Foreign Relations, III, 722–3.Google Scholar

52 Diary, 27 Jan.Google Scholar

53 Foreign Relations, III, 363; Diary, 27 and 28 Jan.Google Scholar

54 Foreign Relations, III, 763–9; Diary, 28 Jan.Google Scholar

55 ‘… there are territories, such as South-West Africa and Certain of the islands in the South Pacific, which, owing to the sparseness of their population, or their small size, or their remoteness from the centers of civilization, or their geographical contiguity to the mandatory state, and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the mandatory state as integral portions thereof, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population.’ Foreign Relations, 111, 796.Google Scholar

56 Ibid. III, 795–6. House wrote that ‘If I had been in his place I should have congratulated them over their willingness to meet us more than half way’. Seymour, Charles, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 vols. (Boston, 1928), IV, 299.Google Scholar

57 The business of drafting the mandates extended far into the conference. Apart from ‘the absurdity of putting Pacific islands and South-West Africa in the same class’ (Diary, 28 June), there was no problem concerning the ‘C’ mandate of South-West Africa, which for all practical purposes became part of South Africa. During the discussion on 30 Jan., Clemenceau insisted ‘on the right to raise troops [in Togo and the Cameroons] in case of general war … ’. Mr Lloyd George said that so long as M. Clemenceau did not train big nigger armies for the purpose of aggression, which was all the clause was intended to guard against, he was free to raise troops.hellip; President Wilson said that Mr Lloyd George's interpretation was consistent with the phraseology. (Foreign Relations, IX, 543.) Beer, who was present at the meeting, thought that ‘Clemenceau understood the agreement in a diametrically opposite sense from that of Wilson and Lloyd George’ in any case Beer regarded the privilege of raising troops in mandates for use in France as a queer idea and queer times for a mandates area‘, and tried to block the French ‘black army’ scheme during the discussions of the Mandates Commission. The agreement of 30 Jan. was explicit, however, and led to the peculiar result that the mandates given to the French for the Cameroons and Togo contained a clause (not included in any of the other mandates) giving them the right ‘to raise troops in case of general war’. See Miller, ‘The Origin of the Mandates System’.Google Scholar

58 Cf. Lansing, Robert, The Peace Negotiations (New York, 1921), chap. XIII.Google Scholar

59 Chief of the African section in the French Foreign Ministry.Google Scholar

60 2 Feb.Google Scholar

61 Shotwell, in George Louis Beer, 103.Google Scholar

62 Secretary of State to Asst. Secretary of the Treasury, 28 Nov. 1919, Foreign Relations (1919), 11, 494.Google Scholar

63 Commission to Negotiate Peace to Acting Secretary, no. 1873, 30 Apr. 1919, ibid., II, 476.

64 Memorandum of 27 Mar., enclosed in Grew to Act. Secretary, 17 Apr. 1919Google Scholar, ibid. 473.

65 Diary, I Feb.Google Scholar

66 ‘ I am to draw up a draft agreement between Great Britain, France and the U.S. This agreement is to contain a renunciation on the part of Great Britain and France of their rights to appoint receivers in Liberia and also of any claim to participate in the financial programme … we are to guarantee on the one hand the open door, and, further, the protection of native rights. This agreement concluded, we have to conclude an agreement between Liberia and [the] U.S.A., and then, if possible, to secure the sanction of the League of Nations to this arrangement. The question of the mandate is quite difficult and may possibly be met by our agreeing, provided Great Britain and France so desire at any future time, to submit this entire arrangement, that between France, Great Britain and [the] U.S. to [the] League of Nations for its formal sanction and embodiment in a mandate. [The] other difficulty is that France in return for her renunciation wants us to assume definite responsibility and wants to have recourse to us in case of any difficulties on the border. … The whole situation is absurdly complex for so trifling a matter as many difficulties must be overcome. How, for instance, can Liberia sign [the] peace treaty and at the same time be mandated ? Yet we are proposing what is virtually a protectorate while at the same time asserting the sovereignty of Liberia.’ Diary, 27 MarchGoogle Scholar

67 Ibid. 4 Feb.

68 Ibid. 2 Feb.

69 Act. Secretary to Commission to Negotiate Peace, 24 Apr. 1919, no. 1722, Foreign Relations, 1919, 11, 474.Google Scholar

70 Commission to Negotiate Peace to Act. Secretary, 30 Apr. 1919, no. 7873Google Scholar, ibid. 476.

71 Beer was left dangling by the State Department without instruction, unable to respond to the proposals of his British and French colleagues, throughout the rest of the conference. A loan credit of $5,000,000 was eventually negotiated between the United States and Liberia, but was blocked by the U.S. Senate in 1922. SeeGoogle ScholarBuell, Raymond Leslie, The Native Problem in Africa, 2 vols. (New York, 1928), II, chap. 100–3.Google Scholar

72 Diary, 31 MayGoogle Scholar

73 Diary, 28 MayGoogle Scholar

74 Ibid. 28 May

75 Ibid. I Feb.

76 Lippmann, , The Stakes of Diplomacy (New York, 1915), 149.Google Scholar

77 Diary, 25 Feb.Google Scholar

78 Ibid. 28 Feb.

79 Ibid. 28 Feb.

80 Ibid. 25 Feb.

81 See Foreign Relations, IV, 131–7.Google Scholar

82 Ibid. IV, 127–31; Diary, 25 Feb.

83 Ibid. 25 Feb.

84 ‘This afternoon [I] had a talk with Henry White about [the] Algeciras Act and explained my views to him. He concurred in them. I found him very amiable and [a] good listener.’ Diary, I March; see also 2 Mar.Google Scholar

85 Ibid. 14 Apr.

86 A commission on Egypt was not formed; the British were as anxious to keep Egyptian affairs out of the conference as the Americans were those of Liberia. The main reason for finally dragging Egypt into the treaty at all was to give recognition to the protectorate declared by Britain in 1914. Once it had been decided to include Egypt in the treaty, the clauses had to be elaborate; otherwise they would be adversely compared in the British Parliament ‘with the elaborate Moroccan articles’. (See Beer's Diary, 16 Apr.) Beer was responsible for the Egyptian draft clauses, for which he mainly followed those drafted for Morocco. ‘Hurst [the British legal expert] … adopted all my suggestions, but had re-drafted them radically. He was, however, quite cool to me and was evidently annoyed at me for calling attention to the gross inadequacy of their original clauses and suggesting the necessary additions. He has, it seems to me, overlooked the necessity of calling for a renunciation by Germany of rights in Egypt derived from treaties between Germany and Turkey.’ Diary, 17 Apr.Google Scholar

87 Ibid. 25 Apr.

88 Ibid. 17 Apr.

89 See Foreign Relations, IV, 569.Google Scholar

90 For the clauses in their final form, see African Questions at the Peace Co,sference, annex C.Google Scholar

91 ‘ … Sonnino [the Italian Foreign Minister] condemned the economic clauses severely, saying that it was going back 200 years to seize private property of [the] enemy and that he objected to Italy saying that France should do certain things in Morocco which Italy would not do herself. He spoke like a gentleman, quietly, but forcibly and effectively.’ Diary, 17 Apr.Google Scholar

92 Article 13 of that treaty stipulated that, if Britain and France increased their territories in Africa at the expense of Germany, Italy was entitled to compensation.Google Scholar

93 Foreign Relations, V, 473.Google Scholar

94 Beer was in London at the time. On 9 May he learned that he should return ‘immediately as I was urgently needed. … Hughes had written to House about [the[ necessity of Australia receiving an immediate mandate for the islands south of the equator, and House had promised him a speedy answer. Hence the call for me. In the meanwhile, the Council of Three had already on Tuesday disposed of this question by allocating the German colonies. Evidently House knew nothing of this.’ Diary, 9 MayGoogle Scholar

95 Ibid. 9 May

96 Foreign Relations, V, 507.Google Scholar

97 George, Lloyd to Milner, 14 May 1939,Google Scholar in Beaverbrook, , Men and Power (New York, 1956), 330–1.Google Scholar

98 Diary, 12 MayGoogle Scholar

99 See the letter cited in n. 97.Google Scholar

100 Diay, 4 Apr.Google Scholar

101 Ibid. 14 May

102 Robert, L.Hess deals fully with the Italian aims in ‘Italy and Africa: Colonial Ambitions in World War I’, Journal of African History, IV, 1 (1963) 108–26.Google Scholar

103 Diary, 12 MayGoogle Scholar

104 See especially Milner's letter to Lloyd George, 16 May 1919, in George's, LloydMemoirs, II, 583–5.Google Scholar

105 Diary, 27 MayGoogle Scholar

106 Ibid. 54 May

107 ‘ … the Djibouti railway to Addis-Ababa is all the more important that it is the only railway existing on the east coast of Africa and Ethiopia. France, to whom credit is due for having built this line, would lose, by giving it up, the economic interests and influences she has acquired for herself in Ethiopia…‘ Simon's statement in the'… Report of the Inter-Allied Commission delegated to study the conditions of he application of Article 13 of the Treaty signed at London on April 26, 1915’, in the Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, 181.22502/1, National Archives.Google Scholar

108 Diary, 14 MayGoogle Scholar

109 Ibid. 21 May

110 Minutes of the Commission on Colonies, 15 May 1919, in the Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, 181.22501/1.Google Scholar

111 Portuguese memorandum in the American Commission records, 185115/48.Google Scholar

112 Beer to Grew, 25 July 1919, Polk papers, Yale University.Google Scholar

113 Beer to House, 18 July 1919, House papers.Google Scholar

114 Beer to House, 21 July 1919, House papers.Google Scholar

115 Cf. the editorial note to Thomas's, H. B. ‘The Kionga Triangle’, Tanganyika Notes nd Records, 31 (1951), 47–50, which emphasizes the commercial and strategic value of the district.Google Scholar

116 Beer to House, 21 JulyGoogle Scholar

117 See Milner to Duasta, 54 Aug. 1919, Foreign Relations, VIII, 363; and Lansing to American Commission to Negotiate Peace, tel., 9 Aug. 1919, American Commission records, 185.1111/7.Google Scholar

118 I have discussed these plans and the Anglo-Belgian Ruanda-Urundi negotiations in detail in Ruanda-Urundi, 1884–1919 (in press).Google Scholar

119 Foreign Relations, III, 809–12.Google Scholar

120 Ibid. V, 420.

121 Beer's views, through no fault of his own, were known even to the Belgians: ‘those who showed the procès verbal [of the Mandates Commission] to the Belgians were guilty of a gross breach of faith.’ Diary, 13 July–4 Aug.Google Scholar

122 Ibid. 3 May

123 Beer to House, 21 JulyGoogle Scholar

124 Diary, 19 Feb.; this remark was made in reference to eastern Europe, but it expresses Beer's attitude towards Belgium as well.Google Scholar

125 Ibid. 12 May

126 Ibid. 14 May. Beer also tried to convince Milner that part of German East Africa should be given to India. ‘Milner said that he agreed to this in principle provided it were practicable. He did not want the chief [cheap?] Indian dealers and traders, but only genuine settlers … he was opposed to giving India [a] mandate and any hand in the administration… Milner as usual was very modest and frank.’ Cf. Meinertzhagen, R., Army Diary (Edinburgh and London, 1960), 248–9: ‘It would be difficult to conceive a more disastrous policy [of giving German East Africa to India]. … The experience of the Indian in Africa has been an unhappy one. It has been the history of vice, crime, unrest and general political intrigue; he has been unpopular with the local governments concerned, with the white settlers and with the Africans, and God help the natives of German East if the Indian government becomes its mandatory power.’ Despite the differences of opinion, there are many similarities between Beer's and Meinertzhagen's outspoken diaries.Google Scholar

127 Diary, 14 MayGoogle Scholar

128 Ibid. 13 July–4 Aug.

129 Ibid. 13 July–4 Aug.

130 Ibid. 13 July–4 Aug.

131 Beer to House, 21 JulyGoogle Scholar

132 Diary, 23 July–4 Aug.Google Scholar

133 ‘Friday, March 21, 1919… Beer explained that the basis of his personal confidence in the ultimate solution [of peace in Europe] is his religion.’ Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference, 223.Google Scholar

134 Diary, 13 July-4 Aug.Google Scholar

135 After one of his ‘passages at arms’ with Louwers, Beer wrote in his diary: ‘… I could make no impression on Louwers. In the first place broad questions of principle and statesmanship, of policy in a big way, make no appeal to such delegates. They receive positive instructions from their Colonial Ministry [sic] to get a certain measure adopted. If they succeed, they may move up one rung in the official ladder; if they fail, they have a black mark against them. Besides this personal factor, they are swayed by national considerations predominantly. Hence I was not surprised that I could not budge him.’ Diary, 13 July–4 Aug.Google Scholar

136 Ibid. 13 July–4 Aug. The work of the Berlin and Brussels Acts Commission was embodied in the Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye; see Beer, African Questions, annex G.

137 Diary, 13 July-4 Aug.Google Scholar

138 George Louis Beer, 128–9.Google Scholar