Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism

4. The “Human Side” of Development: Trusteeship and the Turn to “Native” Health and Education, 1918–35

CH A P T E R 4 The “Human Side” of Development Trusteeship and the Turn to “Native” Health and Education, 1918–35 ALFRED MILNER AND LEOPOLD AMERY may have renewed hopes within government and scientific circles for a more rational approach to colonial development in the years following the First World War, but as with Chamberlain before them, their vision of colonial progress ignited heated controversy among liberal reformers and humanitarian critics who saw instead a recipe for continued exploitation of tropical lands and peoples . In the interwar milieu such criticism could not be ignored. The setting up of a Permanent Mandates Commission under the authority of the newly formed League of Nations in  marked an important milestone in international relations.1 Under the mandate system, Britain and France were awarded administrative responsibility for the lion’s share of the former German colonies and territorial remains of the Ottoman Empire, but they were also held accountable to the commission for their administrative practices in these territories. This meant, for the first time, that the actions of the European colonial powers became subject to international scrutiny and would be measured against the principle of trusteeship now You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. enshrined within the League’s Covenant. The Covenant declared the wellbeing and development of the peoples inhabiting the mandated territories to be a “sacred trust of civilization” awarded to the “advanced” nations by reason of their resources, experience, and geographical position. Although the “imperial estates” analogy, as we have seen, remained a potent metaphor in the hands of Amery and his followers, its validity was steadily eroded in the s under pressure from colonial critics, philanthropic lobby groups in Britain, and international observers, all of whom demanded greater imperial accountability and responsibility for the protection of indigenous rights and welfare. Imperial rhetoric began to shift, reflected perhaps most notably in the former governor of Nigeria Frederick Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa.2 Lugard, who sat as Britain’s permanent representative on the League’s Mandates Commission from  until , argued that Britain’s imperial mission involved the right and the duty to develop the resources of Africa not only for the benefit of “civilization,” by which he meant the industrialized nations of the West, but also to assist the “native races” in their progress to a higher plane.3 Lugard was critical of past efforts to impose Western models of government and education that were ill-suited to the traditions and beliefs of Asians or Africans. “The results are with us to-day; liberty of speech and of the press degenerates to licence; well-meant efforts to accelerate the evolution of so-called democratic institutions are treated with contempt, and result only in placing the control of affairs in the hands of an oligarchy.”4 Instead, he favored an “appropriate native policy ” that emphasized the importance of the village school, the use of local vernaculars, traditional occupations and crafts, and manual agricultural labor, and of entrusting the management of domestic affairs to local communities through their own chiefs and authorities and through the creation of local courts.5 Lugard’s theory of administration“along native lines”via “indirect rule” became the guiding principle of British colonial officials between the wars.6 The effort to establish a new moral basis of trusteeship in the interwar period reflected something else as well: the discovery of what may be termed the “human side” of colonial development. With the new emphasis on colonial trusteeship came new demands for state direction and control in such areas as health, sanitary administration, education reform, and rural welfare. The development of the empire’s human resources, especially through the extension of state responsibilities for health and education in rural areas, came to be seen as integral and even prerequisite for its material development. In this, British colonial theorists and reformers  | Triumph of the Expert You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. were part of a wider paradigmatic shift that emerged in European colonial development ideology after the First World War. In France...