ABSTRACT
While the politicians were committing Britain to the development of selfgovernment in the colonies, the Colonial Office itself was busy preparing for a definite post-war policy. Details had to be decided during the war so that afterwards there would be no delay in implementing positive proposals. A widespread feeling existed within colonial circles that the war would prove a turning-point in Britain’s relations with her overseas dependencies. Sir Charles Dundas, the Governor of Uganda, had no doubt that the war would have important effects:
Those of us who knew Africa before and after the last war saw great changes resulting therefrom, chiefly a remarkable awakening of the African… It is my opinion that the present war will have an even more rousing influence, chiefly political and social, and it will be sheer blindness not to foresee the logical consequences. Unless we are prescient there is a danger that it will not be the Africans but ourselves who are backward and that our outlook and methods will be based on premises that since long have ceased to be valid.1
