International Status in the Shadow of Empire

Nauru is often figured as an anomaly in the international order. This book offers a new account of Nauru''s imperial history and examines its significance to the histories of international law. Drawing on theories of jurisdiction and bureaucracy it reconstructs four shifts in Nauru''s status from German protectorate to League of Nations C Mandate to UN Trust Territory to sovereign state as a means of redescribing the transition from the nineteenth century imperial order to the twentieth century state system. The book argues that as international status shifts imperial form accretes: as Nauru''s status shifted what occurred at the local level was a gradual process of bureaucratisation. Two conclusions emerge from this argument. The first is that imperial administration in Nauru produced the Republic''s post-independence ''failures''. The second is that international recognition of sovereign status is best understood as marking a beginning not an end of the process of decolonisation.