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The place and purpose of trusteeship in the post‐Second World War world order aroused passions and suspicions that were no less pronounced than those which threatened to disrupt the peace negotiations at Versailles two decades earlier, and these tensions, which divided the US and Britain in particular, emanated from a fundamental disagreement over the purpose of trusteeship and its relation to the future of empire in world affairs. British commentators on empire tended to interpret the idea of trusteeship in the context of an imperial tradition that dated back to Edmund Burke's interest in the affairs of the East India Company, invoking trusteeship as a principle against which to judge colonial administration and, therefore, understood the tutelage of dependent peoples as a justification of empire. Americans, who were born of a very different colonial and political experience, were a great deal less inclined to see trusteeship as a justification of empire than as an alternative to the perpetuation of empire. Interrogates the claims that structured the terms of this debate, how they shaped the purpose of trusteeship as contemplated in the Charter of the UN, and the ideas upon which the anti‐colonial movement seized in order to destroy the legitimacy of trusteeship in international society. There are five sections: The Atlantic Charter and the Future of Empire; The Reform of Empire; Trusteeship and the Charter of the UN; The End of Empire; and Human Equality and the Illegitimacy of Trusteeship.

Examines the internationalization of trusteeship as it arose in the context of British colonial administration in Africa, the Berlin and Brussels Conferences, and the experience of the Congo Free State. It is out of these experiences and events that the idea of trusteeship emerges as a recognized and accepted practice of international society. The chapter has five sections: the first discusses British attitudes towards Africa; the second looks at Lord Lugard's ‘dual mandate’ principle of colonial administration—the proposal that the exploitation of Africa's natural wealth should reciprocally benefit the industrial classes of Europe and the native population of Africa; the third discusses the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and the Brussels Conference of 1890; the fourth describes trusteeship in relation to the Congo Free State. The fifth section of the chapter points out the progression from the idea of trusteeship in the East India Company's dominion in India—in which the improvement of native peoples would come about rapidly and result in institutional forms and practices that closely resembled those in Europe—to a new incrementalist approach in which societies and people were thought of as occupying different rungs on a progressive ‘ladder of civilization’, and, depending on their stage of development on this ladder, were suited to different forms of constitution.

This chapter describes the postwar consolidation of a new style of covert empire, in which real executive power in the Middle Eastern colonies was held by intelligence agents operating in hidden reaches of the bureaucracy. The scheme evolved informally after the failure of proposals for a more formal intelligence network, which were deemed impolitic. The covert style allowed colonial control in the increasingly anti-imperial postwar world, in places where more overt control would be strenuously resisted but where paranoia dictated some kind of control. The discreet air control scheme was the centerpiece of this system. The covert mode enabled the British to remain in Iraq well after the declaration of Iraqi independence in 1932, through the fifties. The chapter closes with a description of the growing paranoia of Iraqis and other powers in the region about the British presence and British incredulity in response.

In British constructions of African peoples, the Zulu people hold an important place. This intense ideological investment derives from the historical interactions of Britain and Zululand. Zululand was one of the last African kingdoms to be conquered by the British. For the annexing British colonial administration, as for the British metropolis, Zululand up until 1879 was distinguished not only by its autonomy but also by its highly developed political structure. The state was headed by the king, and the main apparatus of state power was its military system, in which all men served from puberty until they were given permission to marry and establish a homestead. The foundations for this structure were laid by the early 19th-century Zulu king Shaka, who during the period known as the Mfecane conquered and incorporated a huge number of peoples into the emergent nation. Henry Rider Haggard plays a central role in the popular history of English representations of the Zulu.

This chapter details Hardwar’s mundane history, gleaned from multiple sources. For centuries, Hardwar’s primary attraction was a spring bathing festival—which has drawn larger numbers for the Kumbha Mela at least since the late 1600s—but this pattern shifted late in the 1700s. During the early nineteenth century, the Hardwar fair (the bathing festival) was also north India’s largest marketplace, creating unprecedented wealth. Later, the Upper Ganges Canal and the railroads radically altered Hardwar’s local and religious environment. Each major change also generated conflict—whether between the warrior ascetic bands (akharas) that battled for control over Hardwar’s rich marketplace, or for control over Hardwar between local elites and a colonial administration worried that festivals were breeding grounds for cholera epidemics. The most important struggle came in 1914–17, when Hindu groups led by Madan Mohan Malaviya forced the British to modify plans to dam the Ganges.

This chapter offers a critical evaluation of two ideas in international law and public policy that offer mutually contrasting visions as to the basis on which foreign territorial administration—whether colonialism, administration by states under the League of Nations Mandate and UN Trusteeship systems, occupation by states, or territorial administration by international organizations—should be brought to an end. The first is the “trusteeship” model, whereby foreign territorial administration is understood in terms of remedying some kind of deficiency in local administration. Under this model, the duration of foreign territorial administration is ostensibly tied up with an improvement in the quality of local governance. The second is the “self-determination” model, according to which people have a right to be free from foreign control by virtue of their right to autonomy, regardless of whether local capacities for self-administration are deemed adequate. This chapter discusses the contrasting fortunes of each normative vision in mediating the treatment of foreign territorial administration and what is at stake in choosing between them when determining the basis for exits from foreign territorial administration operations today.

This chapter provides a discussion on the commodification of the Orissa Delta. The Orissa Delta’s fluvial fury had worsted the colonial bureaucracy and brought much grief. In the aftermath of the damages the colonial government in the Orissa Delta decided to employ Colonel Arthur Cotton. It was hoped that his formidable reputation and experiences as a hydraulic engineer would deliver the administration. The Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863 addressed the problem of recurring inundation and drought. The impetus to this project was provided by private finance capital. The canal system was in several ways a desperate effort by the colonial administration to bail itself out of the hydraulic crisis while still retaining an overall momentum for capitalist consolidation. Flood-control as profitable venture instead of mere defensive strategy, nevertheless, failed. The Orissa Canal, in a short period, accumulated huge losses and its financial troubles raised a range of questions about the feasibility of controlling complex hydraulic processes through a market imperative.

This chapter examines the role of photography in colonial administration in Africa. It explains that image was the medium for colonialism's representational encounter with Africans. It argues that the idea that Western photographs objectified colonized peoples in Africa is correct and that photographs, like perspectival paintings before them, can just as easily be said to have objectified observers. It contends that the traffic in images under colonial rule served the colonial project in Africa, alongside not only guns and steamships, but radio, newsreels, presses, and carbon paper.

This chapter examines the bhadralok's psychological unease and alienation with the rule of law, though they had initially been enthusiastic about the new form of governance. For peace and security, they had stood aside to allow the British regime to crush the Santhal uprising and the rebellion of 1857. Many bhadralok opted for the comparative security offered by the colonial administration. However, as the bhadralok experienced the gradual erosion of their privileges, they identified the colonial government as the cause of judicial and penal anomalies. However, this was only after the identity of criminality had been grafted onto the chhotolok. The bhadralok also claimed a culture-specific special status of immunity from the law when it came to their domestic zone — the zenana or the antahpur. It is argued that the bhadralok armed themselves with a different set of attitudinal codes, or a collective mentality, which would allow them to position themselves both against the colonial government and the chhotolok.

This chapter provides a better understanding of the colonial administration's policies towards diseases in general, the nature and significance of malaria control specifically, and the complexity of bio-political governance and colonial rule in Hong Kong through an examination of the ways in which the colonial government in Hong Kong responded to the threat of malaria and the factors that shaped such responses. It notes that some scholars have argued that medicine and public health had been used consciously by imperial powers for political expansion, economic gains, or social control. It adds that others have maintained that the behavior of the colonial government could be understood as but “natural manifestations of political rule”. It observes that both interpretations, however, tend to understate the complexity of colonial rule and the importance of local factors in the development of colonial policies.

This chapter explores the New Deal sugar programs that used marketing quotas and benefit payments to support mainland farmers and prevent radicalism at home and abroad. It begins with a discussion of the political and labor activism across the U.S. sugar empire and how it pushed policymakers to make reforms. It then considers the movement to grant independence to the Philippines and the U.S. government's adoption of a pluralist approach to colonial administration. It also looks at the Sugar Act of 1934 and how its administration in the island territories forced New Deal administrators to become more deeply involved in colonial administration than ever before. Finally, it analyzes the Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Butler that led to the revision of the Sugar Act in 1937.

Chapter 5 examines the conception, construction, and consecration of Dakar’s cathedral of the Souvenir Africain between 1910 and 1936. Catholic missionaries billed the project as a patriotic monument to the French who had died colonizing Africa and, after the First World War, to the French and African troops

Providing a contrast to the image of harmony developed around the cathedral’s consecration, Chapter 6 returns to rural Senegal to assess the administration’s religious policies in the wake of the First World War. It commences with a history of the legal status of African Christian converts in Senegal, a key theme in the long-standing civilizing debate between missionaries and administrators, before examining how the issue became

A major area of conflict between the colonial administration in Nigeria and colonized Africans on the one hand and missionaries on the other hand was education. Though the Christian missionaries and the administration found a common ground in the adaptation policy of 1924, it was at the expense of Africans who sought better quality education for their communities. The introduction of new development policies, starting with the 1929 Colonial Development Act and culminating with the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts of 1940 and 1945, raised expectations of a change in approach towards colonial education. This chapter examines how education was considered and viewed in debates over colonial development, the role it was expected to play and the politics of planning education in the pursuit of development in Nigeria in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The European powers who ruled areas of Africa during parts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought with them ideas about public administration. Although they may have governed their colonies somewhat differently, they did use models of public administration brought from home to rule, and also to train local administrators. After independence the former colonial powers continued to have some influence over governance in the new nations. This chapter examines the extent to which the administrative traditions have influenced administration in the former colonies, as well as the interaction of traditional forms of governance with “modern” styles of governance coming from the Global North. This chapter focuses on Africa but the same questions could be raised about the impact of colonial administration in other parts of the world.

The introduction provides a general overview of the history of colonial development policies and practices in Sub-Saharan Africa from the 1890s through to the end of empires in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses primarily on the British and French colonial empires, but attention is also given to Belgian and Portuguese colonial Africa. The initial section explores what is meant by the term “development”. The heart of the essay focuses on a historical narrative of colonial development ideologies and practices in Africa, beginning with the French civilising mission in the late 19^th century and Joseph Chamberlain's doctrine of constructive imperialism. The interwar period is described as a transitionary phase during which the classic ideologies of La mis en valuer and the “dual mandate” reach their height. In the wake of the Depression of the 1930s, colonial development in British and French Africa begins a new departure as the need for metropolitan funding and direction becomes more apparent. By the 1940s, both colonial powers established new imperial assistance programmes and administrative structures aimed at the social and economic development of their African colonies. This sets the stage for the final phase of colonial development in Africa following the Second World War, what has been termed the “second colonial occupation”.

This chapter examines the relation between colonial prisons and the press in French Indochina during the period from 1934 to 1939. During this period, newspapers featured thousands of stories about overcrowded dormitories, wretched food, filthy living conditions, and the physical brutalization of prison inmates. This vast proliferation of prison coverage provoked public outrage at the colonial administration but it checked the power of prison officials and provided a measure of protection for the inmate population. This chapter suggests that the media coverage of the prison system may be seen as among the earliest and most significant manifestations of civil society in colonial Indochina.

The growing interest in German New Guinea's expansive ethnographic frontier became a welcome windfall for Albert Hahl, the colony's second governor. This chapter chronicles Hahl's efforts to convince the anthropological community to move beyond artifacts and to consider the mental cultures of the indigenous peoples living in German New Guinea. Hahl actively argued that the “salvage operation” of indigenous artifacts had exhausted itself, and that practitioners needed to engage themselves in the salvaging of indigenous producers of objects. Set on methodological innovation, the German governor attempted to co-opt a restructured ethnographic frontier into addressing colonial predicaments affecting German New Guinea. Much like in the colonial metropole, the ethnographic frontier in German New Guinea became a crucial component in the development of anthropological ideas and methodologies.