Edward M. Bennett
Mandates and trusteeships have played an important role in the evolution of U.S. diplomacy and perceptions of the foreign policy process. After World War I, the mandate system was introduced at the insistence of President Woodrow Wilson, who believed that indigenous populations in the areas held under colonial rule should be brought either to independence or under benevolent tutorship of the powers holding sway over them. This was part of Wilson's dream to replace the monarchies with democratic republics. Very few new nations actually evolved from the mandate system, and it remained for the trusteeship council emergent from the United Nations structure after World War II to carry on what Wilson began. The mandate name was abandoned in favor of trusteeships in order not to have the stigma of the moribund League of Nations to carry in its baggage. By the end of the 1990s, the membership of the UN reached 187 nations due largely to the work of the trusteeship council's bringing them to nationhood.
See also ANTI-IMPERIALISM; COLONIALISM AND NEOCOLONIALISM; IMPERIALISM; PROTECTORATES AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE; SELF-DETERMINATION; WILSONIANISM.