trusteeship
(trʌsˈtiːʃɪp)
[f. trustee n. + -ship.]
1. The office or function of a trustee; also, a body of trustees.
| 1730–6 Bailey (folio), Trustee-ship, the office of a trustee. 1748 Richardson Clarissa (1811) IV. vii. 36 To settle and give up my trusteeship is one of the principal motives of my leaving these parts. 1831 Disraeli Yng. Duke iii. vii, I have just had a note from Challoner, preliminary, I suppose, to my trusteeship. 1883 H. P. Spofford in Harper's Mag. Aug. 459/2 He gave his wife the trusteeship of his diet. 1885 Sir J. Pearson in Law Times Rep. LI. 902/1 The will contained a direction that any vacancy in the trusteeship should be filled up within a year. 1912 Times 19 Dec. 16/3 Directorates and voting trusteeships of various large banks, financial institutions, and corporations. |
2. a. The function of a colonial power or other dominant people as protectors of a subject people.
| 1936 Internat. Labour Rev. June 856 Something must be done at once to remedy a state of affairs which..constitutes a flagrant breach of that ideal of trusteeship of Native races not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world. 1943 Ann. Reg. 1942 88 The old ideas of exploitation [of colonial possessions] had of recent years given place to the new doctrine of trusteeship. 1944 J. C. Smuts in H. G. Wells '42 to '44 ii. 71, I remember Cecil Rhodes used to say that the proper relation between Whites and Blacks in this country [sc. S. Africa] was the relation between guardian and ward. This is the basis of trusteeship. Much later, this principle of trusteeship was put into the Covenant of the League of Nations. 1946 Ann. Reg. 1945 9 The whole House was committed to the doctrine of trusteeship, and beyond that of partnership. |
b. The administration of a territory by a nation acting on behalf of the United Nations Organization. Freq. attrib. Cf. Trust Territory s.v. trust n. 8 b.
| 1945 U.N. Charter xii. §79, in Times 27 June 8/5 The terms of trusteeship for each territory..shall be agreed upon by the States directly concerned. 1946, etc. [see mandate n. 4 b]. 1952 Times 5 Aug. 3/7 The corporation is a Government-sponsored body set up by the Nigerian Government to develop 250,000 acres of plantations, formerly owned by Germans before the war, in the Cameroons territory, which was formerly under British mandate and is now under United Kingdom trusteeship. 1959 Listener 19 Nov. 880/1 The Belgian trusteeship territory of Ruanda-Urundi, Central Africa. 1962 Observer 14 Oct. 40/1 Sir Hugh Foot, Britain's representative in the United Nations on colonial and trusteeship questions, resigned. |