Mandate-era thinkers equated civilization with investor-friendly contract and property law

Evidence

The curse was starkly outlined by Rappard’s colleague on the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC), Lord Lugard: without a sovereign state to guarantee investments and secure contracts in the mandates, this former East Africa Company employee and then British colonial official argued, private investors lacked confidence to invest. From this perspective, the mandates lacked key determinants of ‘civilisation’: the capacity to enter into binding contracts, and to protect property rights and investments. Rappard took the problem very seriously, arguing that it was no good to respond that, in deterring capitalists, the mandate system had protected its beneficiaries from exploitation. Although coming from ‘the home of Rousseau’, the Swiss diplomat added, ‘I shall refrain from denouncing the evils of civilisation and singing the praises of the state of nature!’ Civilisation, Rappard made clear, was synonymous with economic development, and required an attractive climate for private capital investment. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the PMC’s later use as precedent in the book’s broader argument that human-rights institutions embed investor protection; also echoes the troped ‘laziness/absent entrepreneurialism’ framing the EU later applied to Greece. — connects to: Colonial elites equated civilization with contract capacity and investor-friendly institutions. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 91; Neoliberal property rights justify imposing investment-friendly governance worldwide — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 51; States use law to shape a specific type of citizen and civilization — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 924 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Shows how ‘civilisation’ was operationalized in mandate discourse as contract capacity and property-rights protection rather than culture or democracy.

Broader Connections

• Colonial elites equated civilization with contract capacity and investor-friendly institutions. #corroborates (0.92) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 91
• States use law to shape a specific type of citizen and civilization #expands (0.82) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 924
• Private property under capitalism was constructed by state institutions, not spontaneously #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 69
• Neoliberal property rights justify imposing investment-friendly governance worldwide #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 51
• Empire justified commodity circulation by inventing a barbarous other needing civilization #corroborates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3440
• Locke naturalized market creation as inevitable to defend his class’s property project #exemplifies (0.72) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 281