An ‘obligation which we are not entitled to get rid of’: Competing Notions of Empire and the British Opposition to the Colonial Appeasement of Germany

The Treaty of Versailles saw the defeated Germany’s colonies in Africa and the Pacific redistributed as ‘mandates’ of the League of Nations amongst the victors. Henceforth, the traditional notion of colonialism as an inherently exploitative endeavour would be substituted in these mandates by ‘trusteeship’. The British Empire was at its largest extent, but also saw the establishment of formal, institutional oversight of its treatment of those now under its control. The rise of Hitler in 1933 changed this entirely, with British ministers famously going to great lengths to reach a lasting settlement with Nazi Germany. Inevitably, they reached towards these mandates as a cheap way of easing Germany’s way into a permanent European peace settlement. Rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the Nazi outlook, this attempt at colonial appeasement was met by vociferous opposition in among British imperialist Conservative MPs. By 1939, with the launch of the Colonial League, their numbers counted members of all parties, for a variety of reasons, as well as opposition groups in the colonies themselves. Largely understudied, a full analysis of this movement in Britain and the African colonies offers a fresh perspective on the changing rhetoric and conception of empire in the inter-war period.