Protectorate

Government by a protector. The period of his rule. Specially so used with reference to the period of English history during which Oliver and Richard Cromwell held the title of "Lord Protector." In International Law. A relation assumed by a strong nation toward a weak one, whereby the former protects the latter from hostile invasion or dictation, and interferes more or less in its domestic concerns. Cent. Diet. Such, for example, is the supervision assumed jointly by the United States, Germany, and Great Britain over Samoa. See Davis, Int. Law, 247.

A protectorate is a state which has transferred the management of its more important international affairs to a stronger state. 1 Opp. 144; Salmond, Juris. 210. It implies only a partial loss of sovereignty, so that the protected state still retains a position in the family of nations. Moreover, the protected state remains so far independent of its protector that it is not obliged to be a party to a war carried on by the protector against a third state, nor are treaties concluded by the protector ipso facto binding upon the protected state; 1 Opp. 145-146. Treaties of protection are treaties in the nature of unequal alliance, from which they are chiefly distinguished by a garrison being kept within the protected state; Twiss, Rights of Nations § 247. The rights of sovereignty must be exercised by the protected state de facto as well as de jure, else it will become a mere dependence of the governing power. See Halleck, Int. L. 69; 1 Kent, Gould's ed. *23. The character of a protectorate will depend upon the nature of the treaty by which it is established. As exercised, however, by a European power over a smaller civilized state, it differs from the relation which links an Eastern protected state with a European country; a German protectorate inclines to the assumption of more full control than a British. Formerly protected nations were said to retain their independence and internal sovereignty, placing their foreign relations under a stronger country. It is believed that all the states represented at the Berlin Conference in 1885, except Great Britain, maintained that a Protectorate includes the right of administering justice over the subjects of a protected state. See Hall, For. Jur. of the British Crown.