“Michael D. Callahan’s second volume completes his well-researched and perhaps definitive history of the League of Nations’ mandates in Africa. Callahan argues against those who dismiss the mandates as no different from colonies and instead presents the mandates as significant steps in the evolution of European colonialism from imperialism towards preparation for self-government.
… Callaghan’s study of the mandates will be an indespensable reference work for historians interested in the League of Nations, European debates about colonialism in the inter-war years, and scholars studying the evolution of colonial ideologies and discourses. Callahan knows the archival material on the League and Africa better than any other historian, and his second volume reflects this meticulousness.
… Callahan’s book is a major contribution, based on extensive and thorough research. His arguments for the importance of the mandates in the history of colonialism should lead to new debates on the evolution of colonial rule in the inter-war years.” The International History Review

“Provides us with the best account we are likely to get of the French and British ‘official mind’ about mandates.” Susan Pedersen, Professor of History and James P. Shenton Professor of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University, in a review essay in American Historical Review (October 2007)

“Callahan argues that the mandate system provided a significant force for the reform and internationalization of Anglo-French colonialism. Drawing on Wilsonian principles, the mandates advanced the idea of trusteeship rather than colonial annexation. The author contends that they led to a decline in militarism, an increase in commercial equality (though this generally refers to equal opportunities for expatriates in the mandates), and greater concern for the interests of Africans…The author bases his assessments on thorough research in British and French archives, extensive use of published primary sources, including League documents, and wide reading of secondary sources.” International Journal of African Historical Studies

“This is the second of two books in which the author examines the history of the League of Nations’ Mandate system in Africa… This volume, the product of equally painstaking and impressive archival research in British and French private as well as official public papers, completes the tale with the setting up in 1947 of effective supervision under the United Nations’ Trusteeship Council …This is an authoritative and valuable work, of interest to historians of colonial Africa as a whole as well as students of colonial policy-making.” Journal of African History