ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the principal allied and associated powers, two other belligerents, Portugal and Belgium, and three neutrals, Spain, Denmark, and Holland, having title to overseas possessions after the peace conference completed its work. Before the World War the Portuguese colonies loomed large in world politics, because Great Britain and France, especially the former, feared that Germany planned to annex them, either by seizure or by purchase. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the convention of 1890 between Belgium and the Congo Free State was about to expire. In 1902, the British Foreign Office intimated to the powers that had signed the Berlin act that it might be advisable to put an end to the maladministration of the Congo Free State. The treaty of Versailles ceded the German colonies to the five principal allied and associated powers, and the League covenant provided for a mandatory regime under the control of the League of Nations.
