provides an enlightening, insightful, richly textured expose of the Mandates Commission from birth to transformation under the United Nations. Her multi-archival, international, superbly footnoted, and, at its core, personality driven narrative brings alive an institution ... the author's highly engaging narrative style makes the book fly by as if it were a summer beach read. Extremely readable, richly informative, ... Read moreand boldly argued.
G. Donato, CHOICE
A magnificent study.
Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books
The Guardians offers many important insights, not least in demonstrating how internationalism deepened when Germany became a commission member and how the UK's governance of Iraq inspired today's system of economic imperialism. The book's primary revelation, however, relates to what the league did not do. Pedersen argues that self-determination, the concept that supposedly underpinned its creation, was not what the Commission would serve . Its failure to take seriously the demands of its mandated populations initiated a set of forces that would help to forge our unequal world of today. Pedersen's study is nothing less than a groundbreaking account of how one organisation shaped the 20th century.
Times Higher Education, Niamh Gallagher
A strikingly original book.
Mark Mazower, The Guardian
The first indispensable book written on a critical subject in 50 years... fair-minded, hard-hitting and readable... The Guardians is a magnificent book.
Wall Street Journal (Europe), WM. Roger Louis
A richly detailed study of the League's Permanent Mandates Commission... Pedersen's book is genuinely revelatory a long disquisition on the politics of unintended consequences, as a bureaucratic system designed to uphold and legitimise imperial reconstruction provided the tools for its undoing.
Financial Times, Duncan Kelly
[An] original, stimulating and thoroughly researched examination of how the new League managed to sustain a facade of trusteeship in a world of selfish imperial interests... This is a fascinating examination of empire in its final death throes.
Literary Review, Richard Overy
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