ABSTRACT
Theories and attitudes to colonial development unfolded only very slowly and uncertainly in this period, which is not surprising, considering that it was a time when British attitudes to the empire as a whole, and to the tropical colonies in particular, were still confused and incoherent. On the one hand, there was what might be called the ‘unofficial orthodoxy’ of the Manchester school of laissez-faire dogmatism, based on the worship of free trade, which believed that, provided Britain was powerful enough to enforce free trade (or something approaching it) on tropical regions, formal colonial rule was unnecessary: and on the other hand there was the whole tribe of traders, merchants, missionaries and colonial administrators who had a vested interest in maintaining the tropical colonies, and in some cases in expanding them. Since possession is said to be nine-tenths of the law it is perhaps not surprising in retrospect that those who represented the vested interests were ultimately successful; and that the advocates of abandoning the colonies (the settlement colonies as well as the tropical ones) were eventually defeated – as much by the course of events – as by any determined new policy of expansion. 1
