ABSTRACT

During the period covered by this book a revolution took place in British African policy. Between 1938 and 1948 the whole rationale and purpose of the empire in Africa changed: a defensive, static conception gave way to a positive, dynamic one. On the eve of the war, British ascendancy in Africa seemed unassailable, but in 1947 the door to rapid decolonization was unlocked. The magnitude of this metamorphosis was not realized while it was happening and has never received due recognition. The preceding chapters of this book have attempted to describe the changes in attitude and policy that occurred and to evaluate the forces that caused them. The most fundamental novelty after the war was the assumption that British methods and institutions were exportable to Africa. The empire receded on the wave of this imperialist notion. The attempt to conserve indigenous society behind the barrier of indirect rule, and so to allow of gradual and ‘organic’ change, was abandoned in the Colonial Office in 1947. Local government on British lines, together with the development of Parliamentary institutions at the centre, had finally been accepted as goals of policy. Democracy, in the western sense of the word, was to be evolved in Africa. No longer was the African to develop ‘on his own lines’ towards an unknown destination.