Durham E-Theses Constructing imperial mindsets: Race and development in Britain's interwar African colonial administration Prior, Christopher How to cite: Prior, Christopher (2007) Constructing imperial mindsets: Race and development in Britain's interwar African colonial administration, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3660/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Christopher Prior Constructing imperial mindsets: Race and development in Britain's interwar African colonial administration The copyright of this thesis rests with the author or the university to which it was submitted. No quotation from it, or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author or university, and any information derived from it should be acknowledged. PhD thesis Durham University 2007 1 2 JUN 2008 Abstract Very few have attempted to discuss interwar British colonial officials' intellectual interactions with the metropole in the early twentieth century. And yet such interactions are key if we are to really understand the way administrators understood race, imperial power and development. Where the ideas of colonial officials in interwar Africa have been examined, academics tend to coalesce around one of two arguments. Some believe that the British were cautious and conservative, which is said to account for the rise of the doctrine of 'indirect rule' and an aversion to the introduction of educational provision to the continent. Others, predominantly postcolonialists writing in the last twenty years or so, have argued that the British in Africa were ambiguous as to what their role was, because, they were attached to both ideas of the 'civilizing mission' and the 'noble savage.' In contrast to the first line of thinking, the British were in fact consistently interventionist, due to a moral universalism, a belief in the 'good' of the British, and an excited advocacy of the act of change. In contrast to the second line of thinking, the British genuinely felt that they were effecting coherent programmes of political, economic and social infrastructural development. The enthusiasm for change and a perception of Africa as robust and adaptable more than countered any sense of loss at the passing of a pre-colonial Africa that was usually depicted ll in negative terms, especially when it was felt that what was good about 'traditional' African society could be preserved by indirect rule. The source of British confidence lay to a significant extent in the constant engagement of colonial officials with metropolitan ideas. Elite administrators, anthropologists and other commentators of the day all sanctioned the act of change. British conceptions of racial categories and imperial strength conjoined in such a way that officials felt that they were effecting coherent plans which blended both 'reform' and 'stasis' because both race and empire were felt considerably more robust than retrospective depictions of early-twentieth century fears over the validity of the 'civilizing mission' have deemed. 111 Table of contents Abstract .............................................................................................. .ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................. v Abbreviations ...................................................................................... vii Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Civilization and its contents ..................................................... 16 Chapter Two: Race, the modernists and the mainstream .................................... .53 Chapter Three: Factors combined: The limits of ambiguity ..................................... 86 Chapter Four: The Africa of the colonial official (1): Exporting racism and the British way ............................................................................ ; ......................130 Chapter Five: The Africa of the colonial official (2): Development ........................ ... 159 Chapter Six: Outside officials: The ambivalent minority ................................. ... 189 Conclusion ...........................................................................................212 Bibliography .......................................................................................... 224 lV Acknowledgments Staff at the Rhodes House archive in Oxford University, Cambridge University Library (and Rachel Rowe in particular), the Sudan Archive in Durham University (and Jane Hogan in particular), and the library archival collections at Leeds, Newcastle and Reading were all of great help in sourcing material, and the staff at the National Archives in Kew and the British Library in Colindale were very efficient. Discussions with Christopher Vaughan, Dr. Cherry Leonardi, Simon MoHan, Matthew Killeya, Dr. Mohammad al-Masri, Dr. Oliver Zimmer and Dr. Anna Clarkson during the early stages of the thesis, and with Dr. David Decker, Tom Asch, Ericka Duffy, Peter Fifield, Steven Jackson and Daniel Large during the latter stages, were of much benefit. I acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the AHRC. Thanks go to Simon Nasta for no real reason at all, and to Linda Dixon and Olga Marsden for two very good ones. Several conferences I attended proved vital as sources of feedback, and discussions with Catherine Ladds, Claire Eldridge and Daniel Conway were, and continue to be, particularly fruitful. My thanks also to Dr. Richard Reid, not only for his friendship, but also for giving me the opportunity to teach at such an early point in my postgraduate life, and to the rest of the staff in Durham University History Department, as well as colleagues at Grey and St. John's College, Durham. As for the undergraduates at Durham University, the students I have taught for the past four years have invariably been a lively, interested and interesting bunch, who v can keep one on one's toes. I have much appreciated the work that Dr. Justin Willis and, lately, Professor Michael Prestwich have put in as supervisors. Justin's quick turnarounds when it came to reading drafts of various chapters were of no little help in the later stages of the thesis' life. I owe a good deal to the hospitality afforded me by Bob and Audrey Barron, and to the Prior and John families. I won't attempt to elaborate on just how important the support of my parents, Helen and Les Prior, has been. When it came to reading my work, the comments made by my brother Jonathan Prior, and Hester and Cleo Barron were all instructive to the point where it sometimes seemed, (and still does, as a matter of fact), that they could have made a better job of this than I did. Cleo in particular has been unfailing in reading, and re-reading, andre-re-reading. VI Abbreviations CAB- Cabinet Office Papers, Public Records Office, London CO- Colonial Office Papers, Public Records Office, London FW- Frederic Whyte Papers, Newcastle University Library RCMS - Royal Commonwealth Collections, Cambridge University Library RHO - Rhodes House, Oxford University RUL - Reading University Library SAD - Sudan Archive, Durham University vii Introduction Against strident critics of imperialism in Africa such as Basil Davidson,1 certain popular historians, such as self-confessed Thatcherite Niall Ferguson, have argued that the British Empire did much that was good for the world. For Ferguson, it brought positives such as stability, democracy and capitalism to areas that had predominantly known only the negatives of instability, despotism and primitive economic systems. These systems took a long time to implement, often meeting with resistance, and the British occasionally failed to live up to their own ideals. However, Ferguson continues, imperial policy as it was implemented was more or less a historical 'good thing' .2 For any evaluation of the validity or otherwise of such contentious statements, an examination of the mentalities of those involved in British imperial activity is necessary. After all, how can the extent to which the British did or did not live up to their own ideals be determined if we are unaware of the nature of such ideals? And yet such mentalities are examined in less detail than other facets of empire. Most historians merely make vague declarations as to the existence of a British faith in some sort of hegemonic gradualist 'civilizing mission' among both metropolitan commentators and colonial officials. While it would be wrong to criticise biographies of elite colonial 1 B. Davidson, The black man's burden: Africa and the curse of the nation-state (London, 1992), passim, for example pp.12, 42, 47, 298 2 N. Ferguson, Empire: How Britain made the modern world (2003; London, 2004), passim, especially pp.365-73