Today’s word of the day is mandate. Mandate can be either an adjective or a verb, like many words in English, except that unlike similar words (produce, conduct), the pronunciation does not change when the use changes; it is always / ˈmæn deɪt /.

As a noun, mandate has quite a few meanings:

1. a command or authorization to act in a particular way on a public issue given by the electorate to its representative:
2. a command from a superior court or official to a lower one:
3. an authoritative order or command:
4. (in the League of Nations) a commission given to a nation to administer the government and affairs of a former Turkish territory or German colony.
5. a mandated territory or colony.
6. Roman Catholic Church. an order issued by the pope, especially one commanding the preferment of a certain person to a benefice.
7. Roman and Civil Law. a contract by which one engages gratuitously to perform services for another.
8. (in modern civil law) any contract by which a person undertakes to perform services for another.
9. Roman Law. an order or decree by the emperor, especially to governors of provinces. (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mandate)

As a verb, it still has several meanings, though not as many:

1. to authorize or decree (a particular action), as by the enactment of law:
2. to order or require; make mandatory:
3. to consign (a territory, colony, etc.) to the charge of a particular nation under a mandate.

What I find interesting about the way the meanings are ordered is that the first meaning in the list is the one that appears next-to-last historically.

The word appears in English “c. 1500, ‘a command, a judicial or legal order,’ from French mandat (15c.) and directly from Latin mandatum ‘commission, command, order,’ noun use of neuter past participle of mandare ‘to order, commit to one’s charge,’ literally ‘to give into one’s hand,’ probably from manus ‘hand’ (from PIE root *man- (2) ‘hand’) + dare ‘to give’ (from PIE root *do- ‘to give’).

Political sense of ‘approval supposedly conferred by voters to the policies or slogans advocated by winners of an election’ is from 1796. League of Nations sense ‘commission issued by the League authorizing a selected power to administer and develop a territory for a specified purpose’ (also used of the territory so specified) is from 1919” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=mandate). Just as a reminder and for those who are new to my word of the day, the abbreviation “c.” before a date is short for the Latin circa ‘around.’

This date in 1948 saw the end of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate had begun in 1920, initiated by authority of the United Nations.

World War I pitted England, France, Nippon, Italy, and Russia (and later the United States) against Deutschland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. We learned in history about the Treaty of Versailles, but that treaty focused primarily on what was done to Deutschland after the war. It was the Treaty of Sevres that initially dealt with the Ottoman Empire. That empire, which had been a force in the world in the previous five centuries, was dismantled by the Entente. The empire went from over 1.5 million km² to under .5 million. And the parts that were stripped away, including Palestine, were placed in a protector status under various Entente members, primarily Britain and France.

The Mandate was under the authority of the newly created League of Nations, and its purpose was spelled out, “to provide ‘administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone’” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine). “In Palestine, the Mandate required Britain to put into effect the Balfour Declaration’s ‘national home for the Jewish people’ alongside the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population; this requirement and others, however, would not apply to the separate Arab emirate to be established in Transjordan. The British controlled Palestine for almost three decades, overseeing a succession of protests, riots and revolts between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities” (ibid.).

Now, the Arab-Israeli conflicts of the last almost 70 years might very well have happened without the British Mandate for Palestine, but the Mandate certainly did not help.

The United Nations, created after World War II as a replacement for the League of Nations, pass a Partition Plan for Palestine in November of 1947, with the idea that Palestine would be divided into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. In this plan, the two states would be treated as one economic unit, and the holy city of Jerusalem would be managed by the U.N. According to the wiki, “Two weeks later, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would terminate on 15 May 1948. On the last day of the mandate, the creation of the State of Israel was proclaimed and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine). That war has continued, on and off, ever since.

When I was teaching, one summer our IT department decided it was time to replace our faculty laptops. We received an email saying that there would be a training session on certain dates and that the laptops would be available after those dates. I was unable to attend a training session, but I felt comfortable that I knew how to handle a laptop. When I went to get my new laptop, I was told that I couldn’t have one because I had not attended the training session. I replied that there was nothing in the information about the new laptops indicating that the training session was mandatory. I was told that the training session was not mandatory but that I couldn’t have the laptop without attending one. Hmmm.

So I guess I have always had a trouble with mandates, no matter how the word is defined.

Today’s image is the proposal of the UN for partitioning Palestine. It comes from an article discussion the right of the UN to make such a partition (https://wp.towson.edu/iajournal/articles/1980-1989/spring-1989/right-of-the-u-n-general-assembly-to-partition-palestine/). My use of the image indicates no support or lack of support for the assertions of the article.