judicial tribunals which shall inspire the confidence of the governed by being strong, independent, and beyond all suspicion of corruption; to introduce, so far as it is possible, English criminal law and criminal procedure; and outside criminal law to interfere as little as may be possible with the laws or the customs which have commended themselves to the native races." PROTECTORATES AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN BRITISH 66 [Quoted from Lucas, C. P., The British Empire, pp. 167 and 179.] It is, or was till lately, not always easy to decide where British soil ends and British protectorate begins. The protectorates again vary in kind and degree. There are the Feudatory States of India; there are the Malay States, where the sultans rule through British officers; there are the protectorates of the western Pacific, where the only rule is British. When the nations of Europe, thirty years ago, were pegging out claims in Africa, there came into being something less than a protectorate, a sphere of influence. English and French, or English and Germans, agreed that north or south of a line of latitude, or east or west of a line of longitude, or on this side or that of a river, one nation should cease to intrude and should acknowledge the intrusion of the other. It was all irrespective of native rights or ownership; the one nation or the other might protect or annex the regions so marked out, or it might not; but, as against each other, the rival Europeans were in legal phraseology estopped. These spheres of influence have shaded into protectorates; and that the protectorates outside India approximate more and more to annexed territories is shown by the fact that whereas a few years ago great tracts of Africa were in the keeping of the Foreign Office, they have now, with the exception of Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan, all been handed over to the charge of the Colonial Office. We have seen that the Sudan is nominally under the joint control of the British and Egyptian Governments, and that the New Hebrides are under the joint protectorate of Great Britain and France. Cyprus till the other day belonged to Turkey and was only assigned to Great Britain to be occupied and administered: yet it was for all practical purposes a British dependency. The leasehold tenure of Weihaiwei and the district of Kowloon has been noticed. "The constitutions of the protectorates are as various as those of the Crown colonies. Some protectorates are not to be distinguished from Crown colonies. The East Africa protectorates, in which there is a considerable number of white colonists, has an ordinary Crown colony constitution. In the sister protectorate of Uganda there is no legislature. “Here there is a native King and a British administrator or governor with a staff of British officers under him. In some cases, as in that of Sierra Leone, the legislative council of a Crown colony has power to legislate for the adjoining protectorate. North Borneo is a protectorate, though exclusively under the control and administration of the chartered British North Borneo Company. Rhodesia, which must also be classed among protectorates, is administered by the British South Africa Company under the close supervision of the high commissioner for South Africa. In southern Rhodesia there is at the present time a legislative council, a minority of the members of which are nominees of the company, subject to the secretary of state's approval, and a majority are elected. No legislative council would be looked for in a Pacific protectorate, such as the Solomon Islands. The fountain of law and order is the high commissioner for the western Pacific, acting under the secretary of state and through a resident commissioner, and deriving his power from the orders in council passed with reference to the western Pacific. The high commissioner for the western Pacific is also governor of Fiji, which is a Crown colony, officials predominating in a legislative council, which also includes six elected and two native members. "The term 'high commissioner has been much used in the evolution of the British Empire. Its simple meaning is a man who has had an important charge committed to him. We have seen one application of the term to the representative in England of one or other of the self-governing dominions. A colony had or had not an agent in England. The agent of a self-governing colony became known as an agent general, and each of the Australian States, which compose the Commonwealth, still has an agent general in London. The agents of a group of self-governing colonies federated into a dominion, or in the case of New Zealand, of a colony raised to the status of a Dominion, became known as high commissioners. The name is also applied to the governor of territory which is not, strictly speaking, British territory. Thus, the governor of Cyprus, has hitherto been known as high commissioner, because Cyprus was only "occupied and administered" by Great Britain. The recent declaration of a British protectorate over Egypt has been coupled with the appointment of a high commissioner. The rule is not always followed. There is little uniformity in regard to the use of terms, any more than in regard to much more important matters in the British Empire; the administrator of the East Africa protectorate, for instance, is styled governor; and of Somaliland, commissioner. Still there are conspicuous cases in which one and the same man is governor in regard to British territory and high commissioner in regard to British protectorate. As has already been stated, the governor 53705-197 of Fiji is high commissioner for the western Pacific; the governor general of South Africa is high commissioner for the South African protectorates; and the governor of the Straits Settlements is high commissioner for the protectorates of the Malay Peninsula, and for the old sultanate of Brunei in the island of Borneo." "The terms "British protectorate" and "British sphere of influence" came to the front, protectorate indicating control as opposed to ownership, control which varies in different cases from control of foreign relations to administration; and sphere of influence (p. 78) not even indicating control, but only exclusive right of intervention as against any other European power. We find, too, a more frequent use of the term "high commissioner" to denote the officer who, in relation to a British protectorate, holds the same position as a governor in relation to a British colony, the governor of this or that colony being usually the high commissioner for adjoining protectorates. In this sense it has been used in South Africa. The governor of the Straits Settlements is high commissioner for the Malay States, and for Brunei (Bruni). The governor of Fiji is high commissioner for the western Pacific. One of the lost dependencies of Great Britain and of the colonial office is the Ionian Islands. Before their transfer to Greece, in 1864, the chief resident British officer was styled not governor but high commissioner for the islands had not been annexed by and to Great Britain, but were under "the immediate and exclusive protection" of Great Britain. In the year 1867 the Straits Settlements were transferred from the charge of the India Office to that of the Colonial Office. This may be taken as the first case in latter days of the Colonial Office taking over charge of a dependency from another department. But this was a case of the transfer of the administration of a British possession-not a British protectorate-from one administrative office to another administrative office. Most of the modern additions to the British Empire, outside India and the Sudan (so far as the Sudan is a British dependency), when they have not been placed from the first under the Colonial Office, have been transferred from the Foreign Office. They have started under the Foreign Office, as not being adult British dependencies to be administered and controlled by the home agency for colonial administration, and they have been transferred to the Colonial Office according as they have matured in British keeping, or as some indirect agency, such as a chartered company, has ceased to exist or to exercise the powers of government. From the Foreign Office, since 1880, the Colonial Office has taken over Cyprus, the Nyasaland protectorate, Nigeria, British East Africa, Uganda, Somaliland-which was at an earlier date under the India Office-and finally Zanzibar." (The two preceding paragraphs are from the Oxford Survey of the British Empire, VI, p. 34.) } BIBLIOGRAPHY. BURGE, W. Commentaries on Colonial and Foreign Laws Generally and in Their Conflict with Each Other and with the Law of England. 4 vols., new ed. London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1907-1914. CURTIS, L. The Problem of the Commonwealth. Macmillan Co., of Canada, 1916. Toronto: The CURTIS, L. The Commonwealth of Nations. Part 1. London: Macmillan & Co., 1916. HALL, W. E. Treatise on the Foreign Powers and Jurisdiction of the British Crown. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. HERBERTSON, A. J., and HowARTH, O. J. R. (editors). The Oxford Survey of the British Empire. 6 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1914. ILBERT, Sir C. P. Government of India. 3d ed. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1915. JENKYNS, Sir HENRY. British Rule and Jurisdiction Beyond the Seas. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1902. KEITH, A. B. Imperial Unity and the Dominions. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1916. KEITH, A. B. Responsible Government in the Dominons. 3 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1912. LEE-WARNER, Sir W. Native States of India. 2d ed. of Protected Princes of India. London: Macmillan & Co., 1910. LUCAS, C. P. The British Empire. London: Macmillan & Co., 1915. LUCAS, C. P. Historical Geography of the British Colonies. 7 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1916. A second edition, under title Historical Geography of the British Dominions, is in course of publication. TUPPER, C. L. Our Indian Protectorate. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1893. APPENDIX 3. FOREIGN JURISDICTION AND ADMINISTRATION IN CHINA. Foreign "settlements" or "concessions" exist in certain cities (e. g., Shanghai, Tientsin, Canton, Hankow, and the legation quarter at Peking) over which the Government of China has no police or administrative jurisdiction. (See below, p. 104, for Government of Shanghai.) Extraterritorial rights are possessed by resident aliens. See, generally, Moore's Digest of International Law, II, 644 et seq. Great Britain and United States have each established a separate court outside of their consular service. United States District Court for China, established by act of Congress of June 30, 1906. The following excerpt from the treaty of November 17, 1880, ART. IV. "When controversies arise in the Chinese Empire * * * The principles set forth in the above clauses form the basis of the procedure in vogue at the mixed courts in China. The mixed court at Shanghai, however, had already been established, its rules of procedure having been promulgated by the British consul of that port on April 20, 1869. (See below, p. 104.) Areas leased to foreign powers. Port Arthur and Talien-wan. First leased, March 27, 1898, to Russia. Transferred to Japan at end of Russo-Japanese War. Kiao-Chau. March 6, 1898, leased to Germany for 99 years, together with preferential rights of railway construction in Shantung and certain extensive mining rights. November 7, 1914, taken possession of by Japanese-English troops. On May 25, 1915, China agreed to consent to such transfer as might be made at end of the war of German rights to Japan. (For text, see Statesman's Yearbook, 1916, p. xxv.) Weihaiwei. Leased June 9, 1898, to Great Britain. Deep Bay and Mirs Bay, together with certain islands, leased to Kwangchouwan. Leased to France, April, 1898, and November, 1899. (For text of typical leases, see below.) "Spheres of influence" recognized in favor of certain foreign powers. Agreements exist as to nonalienation of areas within certain limits. |