Chapter 1 is the introduction to the book. It explains the book’s central argument, its theoretical orientation, and its relationship to existing accounts of Nauru’s international legal history. Commencing with a critique of dehistoricised accounts of the island’s story as a parable, whether of environmental limits or of political corruption, the chapter then outlines the theories of jurisdiction and bureaucracy that inform the book’s focus on the history of imperial administration, rather than on the conceptual history of international law. It moves to contextualise this approach in the field of international legal history, explaining its intersections and divergences with Marxist and Third World approaches to international law. The chapter concludes with a summary of the subsequent chapters on the protectorate, mandate, trusteeship and state periods, and highlights the particular perspectives on German imperialism, Australian sub-imperialism, and geopolitical competition in the Pacific that emerge through this account.