Talk:British protectorate

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Protectorates vs protected states

The distinction is interesting but unsourced. Rollo (talk) 10:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

The page protected state was turned into a redirect to protectorate 9 years ago and into a disambiguation page today, but there are a bunch of articles talking about them as if they are different things and linking both separately. I'm really not sure what to do with them. Qb42 (talk) 21:19, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Should Ireland be added to the list of protectorates?

In a book written by an Englishman in 1794 (Caleb Williams by William Godwin), the narrator refers to Ireland as a protectorate explicitly. I found this interesting, as prior to the Act of Union in 1801 I'm pretty sure Ireland seems like a protectorate, but I've never seen it referred to as such except in that one book, and the book suggests that's how other people at the time viewed it. As a result of this, I'm wondering if Ireland prior to the Act of Union could be classed as a protectorate, and, if it is, why it's not listed here? --Vdelgaff (talk) 14:51, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Afghanistan Protectorate State

[1] Reference states: According to a large number of previous studies, Afghanistan was fixed as a buffer state between Russia and British India as a result of the war and the Gandamak Treaty, which was concluded between Amīr Ya‘qūb Khān and the British on 26 May 1879, substantially as proof of the surrender of the Afghan side.1 In this treaty, the Amīr of Kabul, a previous ruler of Afghanistan, not only ceded various territories but also handed over diplomatic rights to the British. In short, Afghanistan was virtually a British protectorate until 1919. 199.82.243.102 (talk) 19:03, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Multiple sources state that during the Treaty of Gandamak, the Emir of Afghanistan signed the British PROTECTORATE over Afghanistan. The source on the article has no mention about the treaty or the details about the treaty. By the way virtually means in essence, or for all intents and purposes. But regardless, there are numerous articles and books by academic scholars where Afghanistan has been considered British Protectorate as signed by the Emir during the treaty of Gandamak.
Reference 1, [2] states Afghanistan after 1879 is a classic example of protectorate. Following the Peace of Gandamak, the Amir of Afghanistan agreed to leave the control of his foreign relations to the British Government....Afghanistan's status as a PROTECTORATE was recognized in the Anglo Russian Agreement of 1907.

Reference 2, [3]. Reference states that 1879, May 26 - Peace of Gandamak. Afghanistan became, in effect, a protectorate of Great Britain.

Reference 3, [4] Reference states that At the Treaty of Gandamak in 1879 Afghanistan became a British PROTECTORATE and Kabul was opened up to a British mission, something Afghans still consider to be an appalling loss of face.

Reference 4, [5] Reference states The following year, Anglo Indian troops invaded Afghanistan and imposed, through the treaty of Gandamak signed on May 26, 1879, an English PROTECTORATE and the loss of control over the Khyber Pass....

Reference 5, [6] Reference states In 1878, the Second Anglo-Afghan war broke out. It ended two years later with the Treaty of Gandamak, which effectively made Afghanistan a PROTECTORATE of Britain.

Reference 6 [7] Reference states Afghanistan was technically a PROTECTORATE of the British Empire since the treaty of Gandamak of 1879 and reinforced in the Durand line accord of 1893.

All the sources confirms Afghanistan as a British PROTECTORATE state as per the treaty of Gandamak. 199.82.243.102 (talk) 10:59, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Reference 7 [8] Reference states by the treaty of Gandamak of May 1879, Afghanistan, in effect, became a British PROTECTORATE and gave British control of the Khyber Pass to ensure easy entry by the British troops. 199.82.243.102 (talk) 11:08, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Georgia and Azerbaijan -> Informal Protectorates?

Azerbaijan and Georgia should be added as informal British Protected States in the post world war one period from November/December 1918 to mid 1919/1920. While not officially protectorates - though both governments did hope to head in that direction at different points - Britain did protect both states during its occupation of the area and had considerable control over the policy of their governments. Below I have a number of sources supporting the idea that the relationships were that of informal protectorates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Georgia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan_Democratic_Republic

Sources

"By the spring of 1919, what had been meant as a temporary occupation had turned into a British protectorate over Transcaucasia."

Batum as Domino, 1919-1920: The Defence of India in Transcaucasia, The International History Review Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr., 1980), pp. 267

"A British protectorate was proclaimed in Adjara, and British troops were stationed in the region in 1918. Oliver Waldrop was installed in Tbilisi as British High commissioner for Transcaucasia and remained until the Bolshevic Invasion two years later"

Historical Dictionary of Georgia, Alexander Mikaberidze · 2015

"As long as Baku was occupied by British troops - that is, until August 1919 - political authority in Eastern Transcaucasia was divided between the English command and the Azerbaijani government. The division of authority was apparently never precisely defined, but there can be little doubt that the political power rested ultimately in the hands of the British."

Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union, pp. 206-7.

This is a very interesting thesis about the relationship between the British Empire and Azerbaijan between 1918 - 1920 and it includes many sources backing this up. It reaches the conclusion

"It seems clear that the British government in London did not at least initially aim to occupy the territory of Transcaucasia and create a colony or a protectorate there as Soviet historians repeatedly stated. Yet the patterns of British policy in Transcaucasia during 1918-20 were characteristic of a common form of imperial rule, in which the imperial power offers stability and order, but uses its rule to exercise complex forms of economic control, exploiting local resources and extracting a financial surplus in a way that damages the welfare of the local population. And then, when the imperial power withdraws, turmoil returns to the region. Nor is there any doubt that British occupation forces in Transcaucasia - and above all in Azerbaijan - viewed the local population through the lens of ‘neo-imperialism’"

https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/132565/1/2019afganphd.pdf

Protectorate vs Protected State, James Onley and more.

Hello, I am here to talk about the current dispute, so, firstly, many sources misconcept the term Protectorate and Protected state, we are given a clear definition by James Onely and even Afghanistan’s defacto definition between protectorate and protected state now.

I am now going to post forward contents of information to support my argument.

7. Protected states v. protectorates The differences between protected states and protectorates, which comprised the informal part of the Indian Empire, are generally misunderstood. In theory, the main legal difference between a protected state and a protectorate was that, while both had signed over their defence and external affairs to the British Crown (represented in the Indian Empire by the Viceroy), only - (cut off scroll down)

3 Area

The British Indian Empire in the 1890s Square miles (approximates)

 1. Listed on official maps of the Indian Empire:23 British India (inc. Burma & Aden Settlement) Princely India (excluding Nepal)

2. Not listed on official maps of the Indian Empire:24 Nepal Afghanistan Kuwait (Arabia)25 Bahrain (Arabia) Trucial States (Arabia) Aden Residency, later Protectorate (Arabia) British Somaliland Protectorate (Africa) 26 3. Actual size of the Indian Empire: 1,015,000 805,000 1,820,000 54,000 250,000 6,900 200 32,000 90,000 68,000 501,100 2,321,100 (27.5% larger)

  the latter had signed over some of its internal affairs. This distinction is not as clear-cut as it looks. First of all, ‘external affairs’ was an elastic term that could easily be used to encompass aspects of a protected state’s internal affairs, such as the activities of foreign residents and businesses. Secondly, the designations of ‘protected state’ and ‘protectorate’ are not reliable indicators of the degree of control the Crown exercised. Before 1937, for instance, the Crown generally had fewer treaty rights to intervene in, or control, the internal affairs of its pro- tectorates in South Arabia than it had for its protected states in Eastern Arabia, not more as one would expect. There are also countless instances of IPS officers intervening in a protected state or independent state’s internal affairs when they had no legal right to do so, and of not intervening in or controlling a protecto- rate’s internal affairs when they were legally entitled to do so. However the rulers of both protected states and protectorates remained sovereign: their flags still flew over their government buildings, government was still carried out by them or in their names, and their states maintained a distinct ‘inter- national personality’ in the eyes of international law (in contrast to states forming part of the British Empire, where the British monarch was the head of every state). Even when the Crown assumed temporary full control of a state during a ‘minority period’, it did so in trusteeship.27 In cases like this, the distinction was only a legal and psychological one, for in regard to the degree of control over internal affairs, there was often no real difference between a state under temporary British trusteeship and a British colony. The same can be said for ‘colonial protectorates’: protectorates over tribal territories where no recognised head of state existed.

Glen Balfour-Paul proposed another, closely related, difference between a protectorate and a protected state. He argued that the British Crown was empowered to make and enforce laws for the “peace, order, and good govern- ment” of its own subjects and dependants in the former, but not in the latter.28 However, even this distinction does not hold, for the Crown held this and

THE RAJ RECONSIDERED 53 other extra-territorial rights by treaty in both protectorates and protected states, and even in some independent states such as Persia and the Ottoman Empire, and in the ‘treaty ports’ of China.29

6. Mapping the Indian Empire The official map of the Indian Empire enclosed in The Imperial Gazetteer of India and the annual India Office List shows British India in pink and British protectorates and protected states in yellow. For diplomatic and pragmatic reasons, this map never conformed to political reality. Ignoring its own defi- nition of the Indian Empire, the British Government maintained the fiction that some of its protected states bordering the territories of other empires did not form part of the Indian Empire and were only loosely connected to the British Empire. Thus, British-protected states like Afghanistan, which bordered the Russian Empire, were never coloured yellow on official maps of the Indian Empire, while Nepal and Bhutan, which bordered the Chinese dependency of Tibet, were coloured yellow for only ten years (1897 – 1906). Arabia, which bor- dered the Ottoman Empire, and British Somaliland, which bordered the Italian and French Empires, were not shown as a part of the Indian Empire and were usually left off the map altogether. Only the native states of India were consist- ently coloured yellow. This means that the Indian Empire was, in reality, much larger than most people realise. By the end of the 19th century, it was over a quarter larger than the British maintained, as Table 3 (overleaf) and Zones A and B show.

Official British maps do not refer to Afghanistan as a protectorate.

2. Not listed on official maps of the Indian Empire:24 Nepal Afghanistan Kuwait (Arabia)25 Bahrain (Arabia) Trucial States (Arabia) Aden Residency, later Protectorate (Arabia) British Somaliland Protectorate (Africa) 26

Here is onley’s source if you couldn’t find it to confirm what I am showing:

[9]

Now, in the article itself, here is whats stated about it:

British protected states represented a more loose form of British suzerainty, where the local rulers retained absolute control over the states' internal affairs and the British exercised control over defence and foreign affairs.[1]

As protected states, the following states were never officially part of the British Empire and retained near-total control over internal affairs; however, the British controlled their foreign policy. Their status was rarely advertised while it was in effect, it becoming clear only after it was lifted.[1]

We can clearly see by defacto definition and even on British Maps themselves, that Afghanistan was not a protectorate, and in fact a protected state.

Here are some other source opinions about protectorate v protected state:

[10] (from oxford) though I suggest just focusing on my main point.

“Both the term ‘protectorate’ and the term ‘protected State’ refer to a relatively powerful State’s promise to protect a weaker State from external aggression or internal disturbance, in return for which the protected entity yields certain powers to the protector. Typically, the legal basis for a regime of protection is a treaty by which the protecting State acquires full control over the external affairs of another State or territory, while the latter continues to have command over its internal affairs. “

In CONCLUSION, the term between protectorate and protected state is misconcepted, even British maps do not recognize Afghanistan to be apart of the empire, only having it under their sphere as a Protected state, while they showed actual protectorates at the time, ie in oman, etc, as under their control. Noorullah21 (talk) 14:24, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Should the Emirate of Transjordan be Considered a Protectorate?

The Wikipedia article of the Emirate of Transjordan (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan's predecessor state from 1921-1946) explicitly states that the emirate was a protectorate. As such, should it be listed here? I have always considered it a mandate. Or should that article be changed? 25galepley (talk) 20:46, 28 November 2023 (UTC)