Microstates and Micronesia : Problems of America's Pacific Islands and Other Minute Territories

Smith, De; Stanley, A. (1970). "Microstates and Micronesia : Problems of America's Pacific Islands and Other Minute Territories".

Abstract: Written with great lucidity and occasional flashes of humour, the book tackles the constitutional problems of "ministates, microstates, patternless islands and remnants of empire" in the modern world. Adopting as the principal criterion of smallness a population of less than 150,000, Professor de Smith examines a set of problems confronting these small territorial units. The first set is essentially connected with the question " How do they fit in with the society of sovereign States?" Chapters 3 and 4 give a general outline of the history of the Mandates under the League of Nations, of Trusteeship under the United Nations and, more generally, of the process of "de-colonisation" under the jaundiced eye of the Committee of Twenty-Four. The conclusion that this Committee tends to regard independence as the only acceptable solution and reacts harshly to proposals for continuing constitutional links with the former administering powers is certainly right. The lack of realism of this doctrinaire approach is doubtless part of the reason for the U.K. and the U.S.A. now contemplating withdrawal from the Committee. But Professor de Smith too easily accepts equally doctrinaire propositions by way of comment on the celebrated Resolution 1514 (XV) of the General Assembly, on the " Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples." He says "The ostensibly all-embracing references to the principle of self-determination must be strictly limited to the colonial context. They were not intended to furnish any legitimate foundation for secessionist movements (and) the ' self ' to be determined is the entire colonial territory the ' colonial' entity must not be disrupted" (p. 41). Why so? His certainly the case that the principle of self-determination was applied in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in the Saar as recently as 1956. If it has validity as a principle of political evolution there is no necessary reason to restrict it to the decolonisation process. And why is the "colonial entity" so sacrosanct? The somewhat fortuitous nature of colonial boundaries is well-enough known to make this proposition questionable. Quite apart from this, however, the main problem is one of fitting these " mini-states " into the present structure of international society.

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MAG: 2118381801
CorpusID: 154650873
OpenAlex: W2118381801