ABSTRACT
After twenty years in the Colonial Service, I may justly call myself a colonial administrator, and yet I find it increasingly difficult to define what a colonial administrator really is and does. And now that I have to teach the job to my young comrades of the École Nationale de la France d’outre-mer in Paris I find it even harder to formulate than I did when I was actually carrying it out. It used to tax my mind during my days in African residencies, but then it was enough for me to live the life without having to explain it to myself. Now, in Paris, it faces me inescapably within the classroom walls: here you should answer, this you ought to know. Yet the more I think about it, the less I believe that it can be set forth in all its numerous aspects, which vary in importance with different places and times.
