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General considerations affecting the legal
position of protectorates

Historical and legal developments of the concept of protection
The term ‘protection’ was used in medieval times to express the
relationship between two States by which a stronger State promises
to guarantee the defence of a weaker one. The agreement did not, in
any respect, afTect the sovereignty of the guaranteed or protected State
except that it implied, according to ‘feudal law’, a connection of
‘subordination’ or homage by the so-called ‘vassal’ State to the
‘suzerain’ State.1 This meaning of‘suzerainty’ or protection, involving
the full sovereignty of the State under protection, found expression in
the treaties of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries among
European countries.2
According to Westlake, the term ‘suzerainty’, which had a ‘medieval
origin’, was ‘little used’ in Europe, but this term has, since 1806, been
revived in connection with the gradual emancipation of the provinces
of the Turkish Empire chiefly inhabited by Christians’.3
During the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries protection came
to be regarded as an aspect of the concept of ‘sphere of influence’, a
doctrine which developed as a result of the territorial expansion of
some European Powers in Africa and Asia.4 The new form of protec­
tion flourished as a result of the ‘formal contact’ made by the European
Powers with the peoples of those countries who were found to have
acquired a civilisation different from that of the European pattern.
This form of protection which meant, according to Baty, ‘protection
in the new sense which involved a certain measure of control, and a
definite diminution (if not a total deprivation) of sovereignty’, was
found to be an appropriate form for establishing relationships between
the European Powers and those countries for the sole purpose of

1 Loewenfeld, E. H., Article on ‘Protectorates’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 18
(Ed. 1957), pp. 608-9; Westlake, p. 25.
a Loewenfeld, op. cit.; Baty, T., ‘Protectorates and Mandates’, B.Y.I.L., 1
(1921-2), p. 109.
3 Westlake, pp. 25-6. Suzerainty, says Oppenheim, ‘is now of more historical
importance as there are no longer any vassal States in existence. Egypt, which
was for a time a vassal State of Turkey, provided the best example of this kind of
protectorate.’ Sec Oppenheim, p. 189.
4 Rutherford, G. W., ‘Spheres of Influence’, A.J.I.L., 20 (1926), pp. 300, et seq.;
For various concepts of ‘Spheres of Influence’, see Lindley, p. 207.
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