Planned Decolonization and Its Failure in British Africa

The University of Cambridge, Academic Expertise, and the British Empire, 1885–1962

“…Sixthly, while previous studies stressed the pivotal role of the African Survey for a profound change of direction in British imperial policy after 1938 (Tilley, 2011), the interplay of macro-and microperspectives employed in this chapter suggests that the Moyne Commission on the West Indies (1938)(1939), of which Engledow was a member, played an equally important role for the new colonial reform movement but has most likely received less scholarly attention because the publication of its controversial findings was delayed until after World War II (see also Flint, 1983). The historical geographies and impacts of the Moyne Commission therefore emerge as a fascinating subject for future research.…”

“…The 1930s did not only bring the Great Depression along but also strikes and riots throughout the empire and significant reforms of British colonial policy that Flint (1983) regarded as "the origins of decolonization" (p. 394). From this perspective, three events were directly responsible for the colonial reform movement that created a consensus for "state-managed colonial development" (Hodge, 2007, p. 18) and thus increased the need for scientific expertise in the 1940s and 1950s.…”

“…The contribution of Frank G. Young, Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry, to the commission on a higher college for Africans in the British Central African Territories in 1952, which subsequently became the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, illustrates how Cambridge academics contributed to the new imperial agenda of local empowerment through the provision of tertiary education, even if this process, as Flint (1983) pointed out, paradoxically provided the University of London with "an educational colonial empire as part of the road to decolonization" (p. 403; see University of Cambridge General Board, 1952).…”

“…According to Flint (1983), colonial reform eventually failed and had to be replaced by a policy of political decolonization for four main reasons. Firstly, the notion of planning was itself fundamentally imperialistic; secondly, the colonial service showed strong resistance toward the Africanization of administration, which the government in London had not foreseen; thirdly, related racism compromised any sensible cooperation with the educated elite; and fourthly, postwar Britain lacked the financial resources that would have been necessary for implementing colonial empowerment in orderly evolutionary stages.…”

“…Powerfully exposed by Said's (1978) seminal work Orientalism in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century British and French discourses, this process was inextricably linked to a feeling of European superiority and the desire of advancing commerce by "civilizing" indigenous peoples, even if the legitimizing racist ideologies contradicted Christian principles. On the eve of decolonization, this situation and growing economic challenges led to increasing competition and clashes between European settlers and indigenous populations over land, labor resources, and cash crop market shares, which created a large demand for scientific expertise (e.g., Engledow, 1949Engledow, , 1950 and eventually resulted in the replacement of colonial reform by a policy of decolonization (Flint, 1983).…”