ABSTRACT
As a result a variety of paternalist policies were advocated, some of them involving the notion of Africans participating in political life, but none of them predicting the rapid end of colonial rule and the complete transfer of political power to the Africans. By 1920 the theory of trusteeship had been embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations, but in such general terms that it could be interpreted to suit any view of colonial rule, except that of the extreme right or left. The social evolutionary framework, into which African social systems were believed to fit, affected the attitudes of British observers to the question of the nature, possibility and speed of social change. Social evolutionary theory presupposes the unity of mankind and therefore has no necessary racist implication. Many writers were ambivalent about African societies which seemed to offer security, but also to restrict the individual freedoms so valued in the West.
