ABSTRACT
The theme of trusteeship, popular in the 1920s and 1930s seemed to imply an ultimate end to colonial rule in Africa, once her people had made sufficient progress towards certain rather ill-defined goals. The discoveries of Mendel which were to lay the foundation of genetics, made possible the clarification of a number of important points in connection with the classification of races. However the theory of genetics had made little impact on scholars by 1920 so that reliance on anthropological evidence continued. The existence of centuries of linguistic confusion between the concepts of race and culture is clear from an examination of the entries under ‘race’ in the Oxford Dictionary. Doubt about the ability of the African to master the arts of good government were common throughout the inter-war period, and some journals promoted the idea that good government was preferable to self-government.
