Page 125 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 63
Sovereigns. (Examples of such protectorates were the former Malay
States, Tunisia and Morocco.)1 These were originally sovereign States
which entered into treaty relations with other sovereign States (the
protecting Powers) by virtue of which some of their sovereignty, par­
ticularly their power to conduct their foreign relations, passed to the
latter.2 (b) Protectorates exercised over backward communities with­
out organised governments such as were commonly found in Africa.
These protectorates are referred to as colonial protectorates, since the
degree of administration over them does not materially differ from
that exercised over colonies. Colonial protectorates, however, are,
unlike colonies, considered as foreign territories by the protecting
Power.3 A colonial protectorate usually arose from conquest. But in
many cases the tribal chief was required to sign a document agreeing
to transfer to the protecting Power the administration of the territory
in question. The protecting Power of a colonial protectorate did not
regard the tribal chief as possessing the attributes of sovereignty, and
it thus considered its agreement with the local chief as establishing a
first claim for the possible annexation of the territory under its pro­
tection.4 As Westlake remarks, the designation of the name ‘protec­
torates’ to the territories of the African chiefs in question
had the double advantage of giving a flavour of international law to a
position intended to exclude other states before such exclusion could be
placed on the ground of duly acquired sovereignty, and at the same time of
allowing that position to be abandoned with less discredit than attaches to
the abandonment of sovereignty, if the country should be found less valuable
than had been hoped.5
Although, as already explained above, the degree of control over
protectorates may vary from one case to another, none the less, a
feature common to them all is that they neither conduct their foreign
relations nor enter into direct diplomatic intercourse without the per­
mission of the protecting Power.0 Oppenheim distinguishes between
‘a number’ of British protected States in Asia of which, he says, ‘their
international status is not clear’, and ‘protectorates over African tribes,
acquired through a treaty with the chiefs of these tribes’. ‘These latter
1 Lindley, pp. 188-202. The old Indian States were originally classified under
this category. But the status of those States underwent, later, several changes, as
will be noted below.
a Westlake, pp. 22-3; Wright, Quincy, Legal Problems in the Far Eastern Conflict
(1941), p. 37.
3 Lindley, pp. 182-8; Loewcnfeld, op. cit., p. 608.
4 Lindley, pp. 182-3.
5 Westlake, p. 122. See, in connection with these protectorates, the rules of the
African Conference of Berlin laid down in Articles 34 and 35 of its General Act,
1885, regarding the acquisition of territories on the coast of Africa, discussed by
Westlake at pp. 107-8.
•Oppenheim, pp. 192-3; Westlake, pp. 22-3; Smith, I., pp. 67-8.