Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African employees in the making of colonial Africa (review)

This edited collection contains selected papers from the Eighth Stanford Berkeley Symposium on Law and Colonialism and examines the wider roles of African intermediaries in the making of modern Africa. It covers a broad geographical and chronological area, and fills a significant gap in colonial historiography by focusing on the roles of African civil servants who staffed the lower echelons of colonial bureaucratic structures.

In a masterly and lengthy introduction, Lawrance, Osborn and Roberts provide excellent synopses of each of the chapters; more importantly, they situate the collection within mainstream academic debates about the nature of the colonial state. These include questions about 'collaboration and resistance; the invention of tradition; the production of knowledge and "expertise" in colonial settings; the role of language and education; and the relationship of colonialism to the production of differentiation by gender, race, status, and class' (p. 4).

The book is divided into two chronological sections, the first on the formative period of colonial rule c. 1800–1920, and the second on the period c. 1920–60. There was a significant difference between the lives of intermediaries who worked during the period following European conquest, and those who worked during the maturation of the colonial state. In this respect, Osborn's chapter on the downfall of two African employees in French Guinea provides an excellent example of the end of the formative period of colonial rule. It signalled the point at which the relationships between colonial masters and intermediaries during the phase of conquest became incompatible with the 'bureaucratic agendas of occupation' (p. 20).

The collection begins with Levine's examination of a Xhosa interpreter and intermediary in the early nineteenth century, who successfully established a 'space for himself in the interstices between the colonial and African worlds' by acting as an intermediary between a mission station and a Xhosa chief (p. 38.) The power of the translator is reinforced in McClendon's account of Theophilus Shepstone, a 'white interpreter' who shrewdly used his linguistic skills for political ends. Lawrance highlights the role of a different kind of intermediary: the socially mobile letter writers during the British occupation of Togo during the First World War, who conveyed legal matters on behalf of illiterate litigants. Like interpreters, they 'functioned as intermediaries in a multivalent legal environment: they negotiated access to the judicial tribunal' (p. 95). Pratten provides a variation on this theme in a vivid and fascinating account of the role of a district clerk, Usen Udo Usen, in the investigation of a series of ritualistic 'man-leopard' murders in southern Nigeria. The murders were characterized by copycat mutilations of leopard-style attacks, and Usen constantly shifted between the roles of colonial investigator and respected community leader, losing and gaining allies as a result. Eckert provides a useful comparison to Usen in his depiction of a chief in late colonial Tanganyika who exemplified a class of African employees he terms 'cultural commuters', a group torn between the Western world and the 'old Africa' of bush villages and primitivism. The collection also includes two chapters on clerical writing, a scarcely explored area of colonial historiography. Jézéquel examines the role of African clerks in codifying customary law in French West Africa, while Austen provides two autobiographical sketches by African clerks. Their work signals the importance of future research into the production of knowledge by Africans during the colonial period. Ginio's chapter on the role of assessors, or local judges, in French West Africa illustrates the 'colonial contradiction' that faced colonial powers; they realized the need of enhancing the assessors' prestige and independence while wishing to retain tight control over them at the same time. Echoing Ginio are two studies on the power and influence of African court elders in western Kenya. Shadle identifies two sets of intermediaries: the elite Africans who advised the colonial authorities on...