ABSTRACT
In the case of the British territories the advice from the Colonial Office has tended to vary round a central theme. The Colonial Office and his Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom were faced with a similar problem in the rest of the colonial empire: they had to decide what standards of living should be aimed at in the various territories at various future stages, and at what date it would be possible for such standards of living to be maintained entirely from local resources. The mainly advisory approach of the British metropolitan government to colonial planning is not, of course, the only possible one. In the case of the French development plans for the colonial territories the influence on priorities of the central planning authorities has been much more direct and definite, both due to the metropolitan character of the planning committees and to the fact that most of the investment funds have been metropolitan funds.
