The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2020 59 translated into a system in which direct colonial control was supplanted by “mandates” to “tutor” former colonial territories inhabited by “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves.” Thus, Article 22 of the League’s charter states: “To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant. “The best method of giving practical effect to this prin- ciple is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League.” Against this background, Ralph Bunche, now 20 years old, undertook the study of political and social science, interna- tional relations and Africa. After graduating from UCLA in 1927, he was off to Harvard, where he received an M.A. in politi- cal science in 1928. He then wrote to William E.B. Dubois at Howard University, requesting help in finding an opportunity to perform social service for “his people” before continuing doctoral studies at Harvard. He was appointed an instructor and assistant professor at Howard in 1928 and established Howard University’s Political Science Department that year, serving as its chairman until 1944. Bunche was awarded the Osias Goodwin Fellowship at Har- vard to pursue his doctorate in government and international relations, which he completed in 1934. The first Black man to earn a political science doctorate from an American university, he was awarded the Toppan Prize for outstanding research in social studies. Studying Colonialism in Africa Bunche’s Ph.D. dissertation, “French Administration in Togo- land and Dahomey,” was a comparative analysis of how colo- nized people fared under direct French colonialism (Dahomey) and under the League of Nations’ mandate system (Togoland, a German colony from 1884, was split in half under the Treaty of Versailles, with half becoming a French mandate and half a Brit- ish mandate). Bunche developed a comparative research design to test whether the military, educational and native policies were better in one system than the other, and he traveled to Europe and Africa to conduct research and gather data on French administration in the two settings. Bunche pored over data in colonial archives in Paris and London but also collected data on the ground in Africa. He argued that the most valid data were the native populations’ own perceptions of their welfare under the two systems. As he wrote in his thesis, he found no significant difference between the two systems: “To the Togolese, the French in Togo are merely some more colonial administrators with a new and strange language and a knack for collecting taxes. In truth, this new status means little to them now and will continue so for many years.” Bunche’s views, vividly reflected in his thesis, were remark- ably like the anticolonial sentiments of the times. In A World View of Race , a monograph written in 1936 to amplify the conclu- sions of his doctoral research, Bunche observes: “Approximately one-third of the human race is directly subject to imperialist domination. …The so-called backward peoples would hold no attraction for the advanced peoples if they possessed no human or material resources which are needed by the industrial nations.” As the colonial regimes he investigated closely dem- onstrate, he argues, the many completely unscientific theories of racial superiority and inferiority are employed to maintain a social and economic structure in which privilege and wealth is enjoyed by the few. As Larry Finkelstein has noted, Bunche argues that race did not explain imperialism, but had rather been “a convenient device for the imperialist.” Bunche believed that greed was the predominant motive of imperialism, and that colonialism and imperialism were pure manifestations of racism. He was acutely aware of this deep down: It was borne out personally to him as a Negro (a label that he proudly bore) and a direct target of racism, among other instances, when Secretary of State Cordell Hull had to intervene to unblock permission for Bunche to visit South Africa on scholarly business—permission that had, until then, been denied him. To understand the principle of self-determination is to understand Ralph Bunche’s later work as chief of the United Nations Trusteeship Division.