Protectorate

[1] It is a dependent territory that enjoys autonomy over most of its internal affairs, while still recognizing the suzerainty of a more powerful sovereign state without being a possession.

[5][6][7] A protectorate is different from a colony as it has local rulers, is not directly possessed, and rarely experiences colonization by the suzerain state.

The protectorate was often reduced to a de facto condition similar to a colony, but with the pre-existing native state continuing as the agent of indirect rule.

Occasionally, a protectorate was established by another form of indirect rule: a chartered company, which becomes a de facto state in its European home state (but geographically overseas), allowed to be an independent country with its own foreign policy and generally its own armed forces.

The Berlin agreement of February 26, 1885, allowed European colonial powers to establish protectorates in Black Africa (the last region to be divided among them) by diplomatic notification, even without actual possession on the ground.

[citation needed] In amical protection—as of United States of the Ionian Islands by Britain—the terms are often very favourable for the protectorate.

In modern times, a form of amical protection can be seen as an important or defining feature of microstates.

According to the definition proposed by Dumienski (2014): "microstates are modern protected states, i.e. sovereign states that have been able to unilaterally depute certain attributes of sovereignty to larger powers in exchange for benign protection of their political and economic viability against their geographic or demographic constraints".

[38] The German Empire used the word Schutzgebiet, literally protectorate, for all of its colonial possessions until they were lost during World War I, regardless of the actual level of government control.