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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
This dissertation focuses on the transformation of Britain’s imperial
administrative apparatus between the world wars, with special attention to the changing
role of the junior level administrators on the ground in the colonies. Before World War I,
historical actors and historians have used the contemporary term “indirect rule” to
describe the approach to ruling African colonies in particular.1 Indirect rule, in theory,
was a system of government in which colonized people retained certain administrative,
legal, and other powers with local rulers acting as imperial proxies, allowing for low-cost
rule. British imperial administrators in the colonies generally encouraged small-scale
economic development, if any at all. Administrators used the humanistic language of the
civilizing mission to justify colonial rule in part by vilifying outright economic
exploitation. Administrators and political officials in London believed that colonies
needed to be economically self-sufficient but were generally not interested or able to
invest sizable sums of capital into colonial projects. Forward imperialists (a
contemporary political identification), like Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial
Secretary (1895-1903) and Alfred Milner, Governor of the Cape Colony (1897-1901) and
then, during the Boer War, the Governor of the annexed Transvaal and Orange River
Colony (1901-1905), rose to prominence in British political circles at the end of the
1 For example, see Sara Berry, “Hegemony on a Shoestring: Indirect Rule and Access to Agricultural Land,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 62, no. 3 (January 1, 1992): 327–55, doi:10.2307/1159747.
2
nineteenth century. They wanted a more actively managed empire built on centralized
economic development and the exploitation of indigenous labor. Their large scale and
extractive projects sputtered, however, in part because of local administrators’ reluctance
about plans that could spark costly (in both fiscal and moral terms) anti-colonial
resistance. Therefore, “man-on-the-spot” administrators asserted the importance of social
and economic stability to support colonial rule. As a result, forward imperialists during
the interwar years sought to coopt junior administrators in the colonies to bring about a
more overtly, Chamberlain-style economically exploitative approach. Although forward
imperialists pushed through reforms that sought to promote an actively managed and
centralized version of economic development and colonial exploitation, the realities on
the ground prevented junior administrators from imposing large-scale projects until after
World War II.
A mid-level staffer at the Colonial Office, Ralph Furse, attempted to
fundamentally transform the British imperial apparatus after World War I by reforming
the way new administrators were hired, trained, and tracked, and therefore, in theory,
how the Empire operated during the interwar period. However, this transformation of the
administrative apparatus failed to translate to on the ground changes because of the thin
numbers of officials before World War II, the lack of buy-in by the junior administrators
themselves, the Depression, and geopolitical concerns. This dissertation examines the
work of Furse, the Appointments Secretary for the Colonial Office, and his forward
imperial allies. Furse, in office from 1910-1914 and 1919-1948, served a parade of
seventeen Colonial Secretaries and slowly gained control over the British imperial
apparatus in large part due to bureaucratic maneuvers of his own and the missteps of his
3
competitors. Furse was able to act in ways that allowed him to take control in part
because World War I called into question British imperial rule itself and the Colonial
Office was a less prestigious position within the British Government. His reforms were
part of a larger worldwide interwar movement towards professionalization and
centralization.2 He sought to shape a cadre of junior administrators who would embody a
common set of values toward the Empire based on its economic development. Furse’s
system consciously embraced a French model of imperial rule, adapting a variant of the
French system of training for their new administrators. Furse slowly gained bureaucratic
control of the levers of imperial power, first by centralizing recruitment and hiring for the
Colonial Office and putting it in his own hands. Second, he then developed a yearlong
training program for new administrators at Oxford and Cambridge (collectively
Oxbridge) that tried to indoctrinate them into viewing the Empire as an economic asset.
Furse and his allies evaluated administrators on how enthusiastically they accepted his
approach, testing and tracking them at Oxbridge and continuing to do so once they were
in the field. With this information, Furse inserted himself into changes to the
administrative functions of the colonial Empire.
This dissertation explores the role of an individual in broad structural changes,
and thus is three biographies in one: a compelling biography of a middling bureaucrat,
the administrative reforms he initiated and the bureaucratic milieu that he created. Furse
eventually created a complex web of administrative reforms and put himself in the center
2 For example, see: Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R, Vintage Book V-95 (New York: Vintage Books, 1955); Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Democracy and Public Management Reform: Building the Republican State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).
4
of it. His previous experience gives hints at his motivations. Educated at Eton and then
Balliol College (Oxford), he wrote an Empire League prize essay while at Eton that first
sparked his interest in Empire. During his time at Oxford he met a number of Rhodes
Scholars and became familiar with the “King’s Colonials” Yeomanry regiment (later
King Edward’s Horse). He would later write in his memoirs, “here the Empire came alive
to me in human form, for men from every part of it are serving in the regiment.”3 After a
mediocre university outcome (a Third Class degree in classical greats), he initially
wanted to join the Cavalry, but partial deafness prevented him from doing so and his poor
degree convinced him that he had little chance of entering the relatively prestigious
Home Civil Service. In 1910 at the age of 23, a university friend told him of an opening
at the Colonial Office as an Assistant Private Secretary for Appointments. He worked in
this lowly regarded office until the outbreak of World War I, when he joined active
service with King Edward’s Horse. Nearly all of Furse’s closest friends from Eton and
Balliol were killed in the war, and he bitterly resented “the young generation…for whose
inheritance almost two and a half millions of my comrades, French and English, had been
killed,” upon his return to the Colonial Office in 1919. Due to their heroic sacrifice, he
would later write, “materialism, selfishness and self-indulgence were rampant – in place
of the idealism, self-sacrifice and discipline that had prevailed in the war, especially
among the fighting men.”4 Therefore, he saw himself as a bridge and bulwark between
his idealized Victorian values and the corrupt, selfish post-war generation. This
3 Ralph Dolignon Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 11. 4 Nile Taro Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire: The British Colonial Administrative Service, 1919-1954” (Ph.D., Yale University, 1998), 21, 31, http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.tulane.edu:2048/pqdtft/docview/304459431/abstract/140F7FB292A40810C1/1?accountid=14437; Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 58.
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framework would guide his reforms to the administrative service, especially to the traits
he was looking for in the selection of probationary administrators for imperial service.
Established elites who cherished the low-cost approach to Empire threatened
Furse’s system, and he worked to diminish their standing. At the same time, Furse and his
allies co-opted the vocabulary of indirect rule to justify economic exploitation. The result
was a hodgepodge of competing concepts and goals, the rift between stability and overt
economic exploitation being the primary logical quandary, all under the banner of
indirect rule. Contemporaries and scholars have grappled with this ideological and
lexicographic confusion ever since. Yet, it was all part of a purposeful project by forward
imperialists like Furse and Colonial Secretary (1924-29) Leo Amery (a protégé of
Milner’s) to hijack the dominant prewar discourses of a supposedly humanistic and low-
cost British imperialism in their attempt to fulfill their goal of viewing the Empire as an
asset to be developed. Forward imperialists saw junior administrators as the key people
who needed to view indirect rule and their ideal of overt economic exploitation as two
correlated concepts. This new generation of local administrators thus believed they were
cut from the same cloth as previous generations who had focused on reducing costs and
maintaining stability above all else. Although these administrators were increasingly
professionalized bureaucrats, trained and tracked by an imperial central authority, they
believed that they were benevolent amateurs in the mold of their predecessors.
Although Furse’s reforms changed the administrative apparatus of the Empire by
1939, little in fact changed in the colonies. Geopolitical rivalries – especially Italian,
German and Japanese threats starting in the 1930s – showed the weakness of Britain and
undermined the confidence in Britain’s ability and willingness to protect its colonies from
6
rivals.5 The Depression dampened the already meager attempts at capital investment for
large-scale colonial developmental projects. Finally, Furse’s presumably reformed junior
administrators were more interested in experiencing the colonial empire as their
predecessors had – hunting, sport and safari loomed large in their minds, and many saw
Furse’s attempts at centralized development of the Empire as troublesome forms to fill
out. Although some junior administrators succeeded in Furse’s new system, as Furse
marked a minority for success, junior administrators in the field reflected the
incongruences and inconsistences of Furse’s grand plan for the Empire. Furse put a new
system in place during the late 1920s and 1930s, but his reforms had little effect on the
day-to-day operation of imperial rule. Grand imperial plans often faltered once applied on
the ground, which numerous scholars have succinctly described as the difference between
colonial state building and colonial state formation.6
Furse did, however, reform the administrative apparatus of the British Empire,
most importantly with the creation of his surveillance system that intensified over the
interwar period. These reforms structured many of the attempts at imperial development
after World War II. The interwar period thus is a critical bridge era from the amateur,
laissez-faire late Victorian and increasingly professionalized post 1945 periods. This
dissertation approaches the problem of the interwar period as a bridge era with questions
about professionalization, the relative importance of individuals in structural change, and
the role of political ideology in bringing out these changes. What is the connection
5 Michael Havinden and David Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960 (London: Routledge, 1993), 196. 6 For example, see: Julian Go, “Chains of Empire, Projects of State: Political Education and U.S. Colonial Rule in Puerto Rico and the Philippines,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 2 (April 1, 2000): 335; Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley Conflict in Kenya and Africa (London: J. Currey, 1992), http://libproxy.tulane.edu:2048/login?url=http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02560.
7
between economic models and administrative models? What is the role of elites and of
secondary bureaucrats in reforming an administrative apparatus? How can older
patronage models hamper professionalization?
Historiography
Starting in the 1960s, traditional approaches towards questioning the British
Empire relied on the question “how did the Empire come about?” Writing during the start
of decolonization in 1961, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher describe a motley group
of London political elites and colonial representatives on the ground as the “official
mind.” According to their analysis, the late 19th century expansion of the British Empire
in Africa in particular was in response to external and internal threats, and British elites
merely sought to preserve what the British already had. In West Africa, the encroaching
French sparked the British to declare formal annexation. If the French annexed areas
under British informal control, like northern Nigeria, this could close off a valuable
supplier of palm oil. In East Africa, they continued, places like Kenya and Uganda were
bundled into the Empire not as part of a broad plan for economic exploitation but due to
fears of France and Germany impeding the Suez route to India. Similarly, South African
policy initially reflected a fear of German involvement that could threaten the southern
route to India. Boer maneuvers surrounding the later discoveries of diamonds and gold
forced Britain’s hand in accumulating large swaths of territory. Thus, the authors
concluded that the new African possessions in the late 19th century were products of
fear.7
7 Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent (New York: St. Martins Press, 1961), 20, 22–25.
8
Marxist and post-colonial authors have challenged this account, however, noting
that colonial rule during the late 19th and 20th centuries was brutal and exploitative.
Walter Rodney argues that from the pre-colonial times, to the slave trade and formal
Empire, Europeans were exploiting Africans for their own benefit and to the detriment of
Africa’s development. This underdevelopment allowed the West to exploit former
colonies through trade and economic policies and so maintain dependency after
independence. Newly independent countries were still tied to the colonial yoke via an
economic imperialism that allowed stronger countries to exploit weaker nations via trade
policies.8 Likewise, Albert Memmi and Aimé Césaire both assert the economic
motivations for imperialism and insist on the need for socialist revolutions to rid
colonized peoples of the system and legacy of their European capitalist exploiters.9
Africanist scholars have been more hesitant to blame European colonialism as a powerful
and corrupting force, instead placing primacy on how the colonized were able to live
within the system. These scholars are quick to point out that colonial policies were often
poorly managed and had little effect on colonial subjects.10 Several demonstrate that the
colonial state was either internally contested or emphasize that the involvement of
Africans was always needed to shore up colonial power.11
8 An earlier edition appeared through a very small publishing house in 1972, but the 1974 edition is what is generally referenced when dealing with Rodney. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington: Howard University Press, 1974). 9 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 130, 141; Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York: MR, 1972), 10, 33. 10 J. S. Crush and Charles H. Ambler, “Alcohol in Southern African Labor History,” in Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992); Joanna Lewis, Empire State-Building: War & Welfare in Kenya, 1925-52 (Athens, Ohio: James Currey, 2000). 11 David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, 1st American ed (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005); Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880-1920 (Oxford: James Currey, 2000); Justin Willis, Potent Brews: A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa,
9
Unsurprisingly, contemporaries struggled with the inherent contradiction within
the ideology of late interwar indirect rule: how can an imperial apparatus promote
stability via the utilization of colonial proxies and actively manage economic
development at the same time? The key contemporaries in this meaning transformation
were colonial administrators on the ground. Forward imperialists attempted to shape new
administrators into viewing indirect rule and economic exploitation as two correlated
concepts via indoctrination and a tracking regime that kept detailed dossiers on each
imperial agent from the mid 1920s onwards. Even though these administrators were
professional bureaucrats, trained and tracked by an imperial central authority, their
rhetoric held steady to the myth of indirect rule by man-on-the-spot amateurs. Memoirs
produced at the end of their careers during the 1950s-’70s (often corresponding with
decolonization) were filled with written sighs about how administrators were merely
benevolent amateurs overseeing their colonial flock. One retired administrator, Sir
Kenneth Blackburne, wrote simply that colonial rule “happened in our typically British
system of ‘by guess and by God.’” Blackburne described how he and his fellow
administrators “were dispatched to Africa with little training but with the laudable
intention of governing the natives as kindly as possible for the rest of our working
lives.”12 In reality, he participated in a yearlong course that taught surveying,
anthropology, economic development, and agriculture, among other subjects in a
program that was purpose-built to indoctrinate administrators.
In large part because contemporaries perpetuated the myth of British indirect rule,
scholarship based on memoirs or reports by those on the ground have worked hard to 1850-1999 (Athens, Ohio: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 2002); Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Volume One (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 12 Kenneth Blackburne, Lasting Legacy: A Story of British Colonialism (London: Johnson, 1976), xiii.
10
show the fractures and fissures within indirect rule, all the while perpetuating the myth
that indirect rule still existed.13 A temporal presumption pervades scholarship as well.
The long-accepted theory argues that British models of Empire shifted dramatically after
and because of World War II away from the amateur indirect rule approach toward a
more centralized developmental model based on benevolent intervention.14 This mindset
became central to the operation of British imperial policies, transferred over en masse to
the developmental policies of the early United Nations, and still dominates Western
developmental policy.15 Developmental prescriptions to “fix” backwards peoples still
reflect the dominance of this mindset; the only differences between ideologically unlike
groups – say, Marxists and Liberals – are the prescriptions.16 Presumably, amateur British
officials have become an easy target to assign blame for various failures of interwar
imperial policies. Scholars of the British Empire, notably Joseph Morgan Hodge and
Joanna Lewis, thus contrast the amateur administrators of the interwar period with their
13 For example, see Berry, “Hegemony on a Shoestring”; Cynthia Brantley, Feeding Families: African Realities and British Ideas of Nutrition and Development in Early Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002). 14 Andrew Zimmerman hints at this being timeless when he argues that those who believed in the colonial civilizing mission believed “as earnestly as their present-day counterparts believe in economic development, democracy, and human rights.” Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South, America in the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 9. 15 For scholarship on the transfer, see Limoncelli, Bocking-Welch, and Riley. For literature on development, see Moyo and Maren. Amy Limoncelli, “Imperial ‘Experts’?: The British in the Early United Nations” (Britain and the World Conference, University of Edinburgh, 2012); Anna Bocking-Welch, “Moving from Imperial to International Philanthropy? British Involvement in the United Nations Freedom from Hunger Campaign, 1960-65” (Britain and the World Conference, University of Edinburgh, 2012); Charlotte Lydia Riley, “Monstrous Predatory Vampires or Beneficent Fairy-Godmothers? The British Approach to Colonial Development and Humanitarian Aid after the Second World War” (Britain and the World Conference, University of Edinburgh, 2012); Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 11; Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (New York: Free Press, 1997), 11. 16 In the 1960s, competing West and East German housing projects in Zanzibar and Dar es Salam both had the same goals of civilizing Africans and have been equally criticized as the same form of cultural imperialism. However, critics of past developmental policies simply point out that past attempts have been wrong and prescribe new policies. For example, see Moyo, Dead Aid; Maren, The Road to Hell.
11
presumably more professional counterparts after 1945, seeing the alleged amateurism of
colonial officials as a negative, backward trait that hampered potentially beneficial
developmental projects.17 Sara Berry’s “hegemony on a shoestring” hints at this
ideological shift as well, although she views it as an organic process.18 This dissertation
therefore agrees in part with Peter Kallaway when he argues that the interwar period was
an interregnum between the pre-World War I colonial era when there was an embryonic
movement to protect Africa from abuse by colonial governments, white settlers and
traders, and the post-1945 acceptance of the inevitable paramountcy of African political
and economic interests. Between the world wars there was increasing focus on the
concept of trusteeship and a significant shift towards reliance on scientific expertise in
development policy.19 Likewise, Joseph Morgan Hodge marks the early 1930s as a
turning point. Economic depression and rising social unrest in the form of strikes sparked
colonial rethinking “designed to forestall popular discontent and give a new lease on life
and legitimacy to the imperial project.” Advisors helped promote cooperation between
scientific experts and a greater exchange of ideas via imperial research institutes, visits to
different colonial territories, and regional and pan-colonial conferences. These experts
played a critical role in the growing institutionalization and globalization of colonial
scientific knowledge and authority.20
Where this dissertation disagrees is on the ideological thrust of imperial policy.
Hodge, Kallaway and Joanna Lewis believe that the Colonial Office had a genuine
17 Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007); Lewis, Empire State-Building. 18 Berry, “Hegemony on a Shoestring.” 19 Peter Kallaway, “Science and Policy: Anthropology and Education in British Colonial Africa during the Inter-War Years,” Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 3 (June 2012): 411, doi:10.1080/00309230.2011.602347. 20 Hodge, Triumph of the Expert, 2, 5.
12
concern for colonial welfare and instituted a policy of welfare and modernization in
Africa based on up-to-date knowledge of African conditions. The Colonial Office paid
attention to concerns like those expressed in the Covenant of the League of Nations,
which established trusteeships. For example, Lewis argues that a new liberal, paternalist
agenda displaced the earlier Chamberlain doctrine of exploitative economic development
in the interest of Britain and its Empire. Interwar developmental projects, Lewis asserts,
were driven by scientific knowledge and increased state intervention to deal with the
problems of the colonial subjects in colonies.21 However, British imperial policy during
this entire interwar period was actually moving in the opposite direction from the broader
academic and international trends of trusteeship, to which it paid lip service. That is,
policy was moving away from some concern for African welfare and towards a
Chamberlain doctrine of overt economic exploitation. As with indirect rule so with
trusteeship, forward imperialists were trying to do the opposite of what they said they
were doing. And as with indirect rule, scholars have been confused by this cooption of
terms. The Colonial Welfare Acts of 1929 and 1940, so the theory goes, prove that there
was new thinking in the Colonial Office about the role of the state in development and
welfare – extractive models focused on British benefit should be replaced by policies for
the colonial subjects’ benefit. Indeed, the monumental African Survey of 1938 (revised
1956) commissioned by the Colonial Office was, as Helen Tilley and Robert Gordon
argue, “in so many ways an elegiac paean to the era of professionalization and
supposedly progressive studies in relation to Africa.”22 By the late 1930s, therefore,
21 Lewis, Empire State-Building; Hodge, Triumph of the Expert, 16. 22 General Editor’s Introduction in Helen Tilley and Robert J. Gordon, eds., Ordering Africa: Anthropology, European Imperialism and the Politics of Knowledge, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), xiii.
13
Kallaway argues that the Colonial Office decisively shifted away from a policy reliant on
colonial administrators who “knew their natives” to a policy guided by research and
scientific expertise.23 This new version of “paternalist faith” supposedly faltered,
however, because of stagnant colonial policies of “complacent trusteeship,” thus placing
the blame for policy failures on reluctant, obstructionist officials in the colonies.24
However, this vernacular shift occurred during Amery’s reign (he being key to the
passing of the 1929 Colonial Act) and the knowledge transmitted to probationary
administrators used ideas of progressive, beneficial development to further forward
imperialist goals of economic development and exploitation.
Other scholars have further mythologized the ideal of a British indirect rule by
contrasting it with the French imperial system of assimilation, and thus neglect the
linkages between the two approaches between the wars.25 For example, there has been a
scholarly tendency to presume that, optimally, imperial elites and ideologues would have
preferred one of two different types of Empire: the French becoming a centralized,
professional, and singular entity, and the British becoming a loose confederation of
amateur (re)productions of local power structures. However, the British system of
23 Kallaway, “Science and Policy,” 413. 24 Chloe Campbell, Race and Empire: Eugenics in Colonial Kenya, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester ; New York: Manchester University Press : distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2007), 96. 25 An older body of scholars, like Henri Brunschwig, Peter Geschiere, and Michael Crowder, directly compares and contrast the two systems, whereas newer scholars tend to disregard the ideological differences. For example, Emily Osborn argues that the French colonial state attempted to circumvent households and impose a bureaucratic structure onto the colonized. Timothy Parsons, exploring Anglophone Africa, focuses on the local resistance to shoring up “traditional” structures, a building block for British indirect rule. Henri Brunschwig, French Colonialism, 1871-1914: Myths and Realities (New York: Praeger, 1966); Peter Geschiere, “Chiefs and Colonial Rule in Cameroon: Inventing Chieftaincy, French and British Style,” Africa 63, no. 2 (1993); Michael Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968); Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011); Timothy Parsons, Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004).
14
training introduced by Furse was a direct variant of the French system of training for their
new administrators.
Véronique Dimier, in her comparison of the French and British systems of
administration, analyzes why both contemporaries and later scholars have been
preoccupied with distinguishing between the two ideological foundations of Empire. Her
work explores the rise of professional training in the colonial services and Furse’s
promotion of an espirit de corps, but also presumes the prevalence of pre-1914 indirect
rule as a guiding philosophy for British interwar administration.26 At the same time,
scholars have found that the two systems operated similarly on the ground. At this point,
however, they are much more interested (and rightfully so) in showing how local
resistance to imperial power outweighed the importance of imperial ideologies.27 In other
words, imperial ideologies mattered little when it came to enforcing policy. Likewise,
postcolonial authors have been less concerned with showing the fractures within indirect
rule and have instead focused on how the “Civilizing Mission” formed the racist ideology
of the British system of rule.28 Scholars have therefore advanced the “cult of the amateur”
26 Kirk-Greene stresses that Dimier neglected the archival material of British imperial ideologues like Margery Perham, who would go on to become a well-known Labour critic of Empire. Véronique Dimier, “Three Universities and the British Elite: A Science of Colonial Administration in the UK,” Public Administration 84, no. 2 (June 2006): 337–66; Véronique Dimier, Le Gouvernement Des Colonies, Regards Croisés Franco-Britanniques (Bruxelles: L’Universite De Bruxelles, 2004); A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “Entente Cordiale Ou Enquete Coloniale? Margery Perham Hands Down Her Suspended Judgement,” Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History 37, no. 1 (March 2009): 119–26. 27 Cross colonial comparisons are more frequent in Southeast Asia. Anne L. Foster, “Boundaries, Borders, and Imperial Control: Opium and the Imperial Project in Southeast Asia, 1890-1930,” Journal Of The Canadian Historical Association 20, no. 2 (2009); Ann Laura Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule,” in The New Imperial Histories Reader (London: Routledge, 2010). 28 This is a theme in the following works: Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized; Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, Princeton Studies in Culture/power/history (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1996); Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, Convergences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Nicholas B Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).
15
in part by uncritically taking at face value the interwar administrators’ assertions of their
own amateurism.29
Scholars like Caroline Elkins and David Anderson explore the administrative
function of British Empire through the lens of a single colony or region, and thus are
susceptible to missing larger Empire-wide changes.30 While there are a handful of
scholars, notably Anthony Kirk-Greene, that have attended to grapple with the
administration of British Empire as a whole, however, none of these scholars see Furse’s
reforms to the administrative services as anything more than routine, which this
dissertation argues is central to understanding structural changes to the administrative
apparatus.31 Although some scholars, notably those in the Colonial Lives Across the
British Empire collection, have provided personal histories of individuals moving
through the Empire, scholars have relegated the tracking system Furse initiated to
bureaucratic posturing, when exploring it at all.32 Instead of seeing Furse as a bridge
between a patronage and professional model, they insist he was a simple late Victorian
trapped in an unforgiving interwar world and thus dismiss his potentially radical reforms.
Scholars have studied the process of administrative reform and the ideological
battles it entailed in other imperial contexts. For example, scholars of pre-Mutiny British
rule in India have explored the debates both in the colony and the metropolis between 29 For example, see Blackburne, Lasting Legacy, xiii. 30 For example, see Lewis, Empire State-Building; Campbell, Race and Empire; Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt, 2005); Anderson, Histories of the Hanged; Henrika Kuklick, The Imperial Bureaucrat: The Colonial Administrative Service in the Gold Coast, 1920-1939 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1979); Foster, “Boundaries, Borders, and Imperial Control.” 31 Nile Gardiner was Kirk-Greene’s student. For example, see A. H. M Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837-1997 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); Dimier, “Three Universities and the British Elite”; William Golant, Image of Empire: The Early History of the Imperial Institute, 1887-1925 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1984); Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire.” 32 For example of following individuals, see Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
16
two groups of ideologues. The first consisted of conservatives and orientalists who
argued for a minimalist approach to rule, claiming that Indian cultures and systems
should generally be respected and left alone if they were relatively efficient. The second
included missionaries and utilitarians who argued for an intrusive state to reform
Britain’s corrupted Indian subjects through Western education and religion. These
debates had been ongoing but came to a head after the 1857 Mutiny, when missionaries
and utilitarians blamed conservatives for being too reliant on old structures and systems.
Conservatives retorted that overzealous missionaries had disrupted Indian society.33
A very different example is described in Janis Mimura’s Planning for Empire:
Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State (2011), which explores the
ideological underpinnings of administrative reform in the Japanese Empire pre- and post-
Pacific War. Similar to the British interwar context, the Japanese Empire had two
competing ideologies: one based on a “managerial state,” which relied on fascist ideology
and technological planning, had displaced another based on a “night-watchmen state” that
sought order and stability. Hence, a small but influential group of bureaucrats fueled
chaos by overturning traditional structures of colonial power.34 Mimura’s work and this
dissertation are part of a larger scholastic movement that views the interwar period as a
33 Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, The Social Foundations of Aesthetic Forms Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism, Oxford English Monographs (Oxford [England] : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1992); Martha McLaren, British India & British Scotland, 1780-1830: Career Building, Empire Building, and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance, 1st ed, Series on International, Political, and Economic History (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2001); Denis Judd, The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947 (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 34 Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State., 23, 30, 39, 42, 69. 84, 105, 194.
17
time of state-centered approaches.35 The interwar period saw state-centric models take
hold in the United States, Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union, and the reform of the
British colonial service was part of this larger international process.
While he slowly gained control of the imperial apparatus, Furse sought to codify
the optimal traits of colonial administrators to impose a set of ideal traits in order to
homogenize the type of man recruited. Around the British Empire, Britishness changed
during World War I to signify a subsection of whiteness. Previously, Britishness had
implied a larger, more racially inclusive imperial citizenship – e.g. Paul Gilroy’s work
showing how Jamaican person of color could conceivably claim to be British.36 However,
as Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds argue, large swaths of German settlers in places
like Australia and Canada inspired a wartime readjustment of racial politics. One had to
be racially white and have British heritage in order to claim to be fully “British.”37 These
attempts revealed the fractures and fissures of racial identities around the British Empire
during the interwar period.
This dissertation concurs with what other scholars of the British Empire have
found concerning composition of the imperial services as middle class and filled with
English schoolboy types. This goes against the traditional criticism from Robert Heussler,
who in 1963 argued that Furse emphasized aristocratic character traits like
35 For example, see: Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 5, 54; Hofstadter, The Age of Reform; Pereira, Democracy and Public Management Reform. 36 Paul Gilroy, “There Ain”t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, Black Literature and Culture (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 37 Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, Critical Perspectives on Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
18
gentlemanliness above all else and therefore spurred middle class applicants.38 In
response, Anthony Kirk-Greene and his student Nile Gardiner note that those
administrators filling the lower rungs in colonies and protectorates around the globe
generally shared these same traits, but disagree with Heussler’s conviction that the
Empire was filled with aristocrats – the middle classes were well represented in colonial
administration.39 Likewise, Andrew Roberts argues that Furse’s methods of selection
paired nicely with the priorities of colonial administration based on low cost and, as
Furse claimed, the “preservation of tribal customs…[and] proper care of native
agriculture.” Because, as Roberts claims, “holding down Africa was largely a matter of
bluff,” it was logical to employ English schoolboy types with (so they themselves
believed) proper traits that would facilitate the exercise of authority.40 These studies,
whether focused on the metropolis or on the periphery, concur that the man on the ground
in the British Empire was an amateur who favored supporting traditional hierarchies and
distrusted policies emanating from the center.41 However, to scholars more critical of the
British Empire like Hodge and Lewis, “amateur” administrators were anything but
pragmatic. They interfered in local populations via intrusive policies that saw indigenous
38 Robert Heussler, Yesterday’s Rulers; the Making of the British Colonial Service (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1963). 39 Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service; A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858-1966 (Houndmills [England]: Macmillan Press, 2000); Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire.” Kirk-Greene’s central argument in Imperial Administrators is that public school education created an ethos of rule that can be seen across the entire period of the 19th and 20th century Empire. 40 Andrew Roberts, ed., The Colonial Moment in Africa: Essays on the Movement of Minds and Materials, 1900-1940 (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 41. 41 This scholarship sees a consistent mindset that is predominant in the post-1945 era even. For example, see: Kuklick, The Imperial Bureaucrat; A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “The Thin White Line: The Size of the British Colonial Service in Africa,” African Affairs 79, no. 314 (January 1, 1980): 25–44; Dimier, “Three Universities and the British Elite”; Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 276, 307, 309; Partha Sarathi Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964 (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1975), 79, 129, 180, 186, 262; Michael D. Callahan, “The Failure of ‘Closer Union’ in British East Africa, 1929–31,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25, no. 2 (1997): 267, doi:10.1080/03086539708583001.
19
societies as unchanging over time, entrenched corrupt local elite “headsmen,” reinforced
colonial stereotypes about the backwardness and undeveloped nature of the colonized,
and hampered beneficial initiatives that could have changed African societies for the
better.42
In discussing Furse’s codification of the optimal traits of British imperial
administrators, this dissertation interacts with scholars of race, Britishness, and
whiteness. European construction of the “other” or “orient” has been a thriving strand of
imperial historiography for the last four decades. Scholars approaching Indian, African,
and Asian contexts have all contributed to our understanding of how European society
first constructed the other, which in turn constructed “Europe.” In the 1950s and 1960s,
postcolonial authors like Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon analyzed the colonial racial
system in order to understand and undermine it – understanding how the Europeans
constructed a “colonized” and “colonizer” would allow for newly independent nations to
build a new, decolonized, national history.43 Expanding on this idea of constructing the
“other,” Edward Said’s Orientalism argued for a mutually reinforcing knowledge
production that allowed European elites to construct the idea of the “orient” vis-à-vis
“Europe.”44 Hence, as Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, the colonial encounter also
constructed “Europeans.”45 Scholars of colonial Africa have expanded on this framework
to show how Europeans defined themselves while living in places like Southern Rhodesia
or Kenya. Jock McCulloch, for example, argues that European settler communities
42 Lewis, Empire State-Building; Hodge, Triumph of the Expert. 43 Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 2008). 44 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 45 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Provincializing Europe: Postcoloniality and the Critique of History,” Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (October 1, 1992): 337–57, doi:10.1080/09502389200490221.
20
utilized the fear of “black peril” – the rape of white women or the murder of white
settlers – to construct a white community.46
A wide range of scholars have followed the example of Anne McClintock’s 1995
Imperial Leather and explore Western identity “at home” by analyzing advertisements
and products for their colonial representations and showing how domestic audiences
understood and consumed “empire,” broadly construed.47 Furse was concerned about
how to project an image of the Empire to the colonized at the same time various portions
of the Empire were calling into question European domination and authority and the
construction of authority based on privileging whiteness. Erez Manela has shown how
these nationalist and anti-colonialist political groups – notably in India and Egypt – began
to challenge the privilege of European whites around the British Empire after 1919.48
Like James Barrett and David Roediger, I am not making an argument about the
constancy that race had in imperial discourse but instead am interested in showing the
nuances and complexities of these categories.49
This study varies from other whiteness studies in that it is concerned with a
projection of Britishness abroad; most whiteness studies are concerned with the
construction of whiteness or Britishness “at home” in the metropole or in white settler
46 McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue. 47 For example, see: Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 2008); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995); Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Matthew Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism in Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008); Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2003); David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Louis Perez, The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Histioriography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). 48 For example, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2007). 49 James R. Barrett and David Roediger, “Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality and the ‘New Immigrant’ Working Class,” Journal of American Ethnic History 16, no. 3 (April 1, 1997): 6.
21
communities like Southern Rhodesia.50 Imperial whiteness studies owe much of their
theoretical framework to post-colonial and Africanist scholarship. In order to understand
how imperialism operated, scholars have focused on reconstructing how the colonial
encounter mutually constructed the colonized and the colonizer.51 This study contributes
to this broader scholarship by focusing on the colonizers’ concerns about how they were
represented to the colonized. Individual administrators were the embodiment of the
British Empire. The ramifications for allowing disheveled, ungentlemanly, dishonorable,
unmanly or intolerant administrators were extremely dangerous in the minds of forward
imperialists like Furse and formed the basis for recruitment around the globe.
Likewise, the ideal embodiment of the British Empire through a male
administrator representative builds upon the work of gender historians. These scholars
have primarily analyzed masculinity though the construction and control of female
bodies, as European males in imperial settings attempted to dominate both European and
50 British, Australian and North American examples feature the focus on the construction of whiteness, Britishness, etc. “at home.” Tony Kushner (Antony Robin Jeremy), The Battle of Britishness : Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present (Manchester ; New York: Manchester University Press, 2012); Gilroy, “There Ain”t No Black in the Union Jack’; Stuart Ward, Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (Carlton South, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 2001); Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917, Women in Culture and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century; Nadia Rhook, “Listen to Nodes of Empire: Speech and Whiteness in Victorian Hawker’s License Courts,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 15, no. 2 (2014), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v015/15.2.rhook.html; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Rev. ed., with new introductory essay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Andrew Gamble and Anthony Wright, eds., Britishness: Perspectives on the Britishness Question (Chichester, U.K. ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell in association with The political quarterly, 2009); McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue. 51 Postcolonial authors were first in critically examining the colonial situation from the perspective of the colonized. Memmi and Cesaire are two key early examples. Africanists have emphasized the agency of individual and groups of Africans. A number of works, for example, on liquor laws exemplifies how Africans navigated the confines brought about by colonialism. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized; Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Charles Ambler, “East Africa: Metropolitan Action and Local Initiative.,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume V: Historiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Richard Parry, “The ‘Durban System’ and the Limits of Colonial Power in Salisbury, 1890-1935,” in Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa, ed. J. S. Crush and Charles H. Ambler (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992); Willis, Potent Brews; Crush and Ambler, “Alcohol in Southern African Labor History.”
22
non-European female bodies, reflecting European males’ fears and anxieties.52 Ann
Stoler has shown in other imperial contexts that European Empire was gendered
masculine by imperial agents through the portrayal of both indigenous and European
women.53 Protection of a feminine Empire was a consistent trope – the personification of
a female Britannia for example – but male administrators became a focal point for a
specific construction of an imperial ideal. These ideal male traits, like gentility and
respectability, as Gail Bederman argued in her seminal Manliness & Civilization, defined
manly character as having control over physical and emotional impulses, stressed the
need for self-made men, and emphasized morality.54 Manly traits would allow “the kind
of man who will command the confidence and respect of the native” to properly represent
the Empire. This had great importance, as Furse and his allies believed that the Empire
was a confidence game, with the administrator on the ground being the primary conduit
for imperial rule. His “personal influence” exercised over the colonized could only be
attained with the preferred manly traits.55
Methods and Sources
Furse created a system and placed himself in the center of it. For three decades,
from 1919 until his retirement in 1948 (even then, his right hand man and brother-in-law
replaced him), Furse gradually controlled the hiring, then training, and finally tracking
and promoting of most administrators around the British Empire. This dissertation is but
52 For example, see McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue; Holly Hanson, “Queen Mothers and Good Government in Buganda: The Loss of Women’s Political Power in Nineteenth-Century East Africa,” in Women in African Colonial Histories, ed. Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi (Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 2002). 53 Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule.” 54 Bederman, Manliness & Civilization, 11, 15. 55 Furse’s Notes on the Recruitment Scheme, 9/4/1928. “University of Queensland: Employment of Graduates – Colonial Appointments, 1917-1954,” n.d., 98, University of Queensland.
23
one step in understanding this vast system of control and power and perhaps posits as
many questions about the operation of the British Empire as it answers. Although I have
tried to incorporate the products of Furse’s system as much as possible, the sheer
numbers involved have limited my ability to grasp more than a handful of administrators
for a small portion of their careers. Furse personally hired 1,682 administrators around
the Empire from 1919-1939, in addition the thousands of technical hires (e.g. educational,
agricultural or veterinary hires). Overall, he and his office directly hired 8,101 employees
of the Empire over this period.56
I found Furse’s invisible web by happenstance. The archival records are scattered
amongst imperial (in the United Kingdom), educational, and colonial (in the former
Empire) records, both in official and personal papers. As Antoinette Burton notes,
imperial archives have been organized in a certain way to lead historians towards
whiggish (or at least less critical) conclusions by normalizing, through classification and
re-presentation “what are invariably fragmented, fractured and disassembled, strands of
historical evidence and experience.”57 Although this dissertation relies heavily on official
Colonial Office records, it augments these with educational records from the Oxbridge
course, recruitment board records from Australia and New Zealand, information sent to
individual colonies, and personal papers from elite officials like Furse and Amery and
administrators themselves. This multi-sited and multi-pronged approach netted a massive
cache of around 800 documents from over twenty archives in six countries. This was first
daunting to approach. I digitized and organized the records and thus was able to process
56 Data derived from: “CO 877/16/21: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Statistics of Candidates Appointed by Secretary of State, 1913-1943,” 1943, National Archives, Kew. 57 Antoinette Burton, Empire in Question: Reading, Writing and Teaching British Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 62.
24
them chronologically. With this process and an understanding of the historiographical
questions, Furse’s reforms and their ramifications emerged.
Although helped by extensive archival research around the world in Britain,
Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, this project was beset with
limitations. First, education records in the United Kingdom are closed for up to eighty
years and in New Zealand and Australian sometimes forever, and generally one needs
confirmation that a student has died decades prior for access to individual files, or one
needs to be a direct relative. Likewise, employment records in Malaysia are generally
open only to relatives, although a wink and a smile go a long way in certain archives.
Even if Oxford and Cambridge have more information on individuals that took the
courses, I was generally only able to look at records from before 1934, and even then
only at general information on the course. Fantastic reports on probationers during their
training year are found in the Colonial Office archives under general course information
folders, e.g. this one for David Percival, who had a long career in Nigeria, Cyprus, and
ending in Gambia as the director of commerce and industry58:
Strikes one rather foolish, and has annoyed me by being lax in his habits, arriving late for examinations, etc. I feel, however, that this is his worse [sic] fault, and that though he will require to be told to do things he will then carry them out efficiently and to the best of his moderate ability.59
These reports, however, are available only for the initial years of the course when Furse
was perfecting his tracking regime.
58 “Percival, D.A.” A. H. M Kirk-Greene, A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service, 1939-1966 (London; New York: H. Zell, 1991). 59 Van Grutten to Bevir, Comments on Cambridge Probationers, 4/2/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” n.d., 105, National Archives, Kew.
25
Most importantly and unfortunately, only pieces and parts of Furse’s dossiers are
accessible, and researchers cannot access the dossier files Furse created at the Colonial
Office. It is an explicit and inviolable rule that no scholar may have access to Colonial
Office personnel files, (even if that researcher seeks his own file, as Anthony Kirk-
Greene found out), nor are those files even archived at the National Archives in London.
They are simply destroyed after an unknown fixed period, and they are only kept for
pension inquiries.60 Individual colonies had versions of the file sent to them when a new
transfer or probationer came to them, but these too seem to have been extracted or
destroyed some time during or after decolonization.61 One lucky aspect of studying the
interwar period is that I had access to most Colonial Office files after fifty years. Scholars
that were working in the 1970s and 1980s did not have this luxury. For example, Henrika
Kuklick had to use aliases for individual administrators in her 1979 book on
administration in the Gold Coast because of privacy restrictions and Anthony Kirk-
Greene pieced together parts of Furse’s Canadian recruitment system from university
archives in Canada, as he could not yet access the Colonial Office files on the subject for
a 1981 article.62
60 As Kirk-Greene, who had a career in colonial service, reported. Kirk-Greene, A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service, 1939-1966, 9. 61 Attempts to find files in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong all came up short. The only personnel files found deal with basic information like loans or notices of taking a test or brief biographical sketches for public dissemination. For example: “1957/0286703: Application by Mr. W.J. Peel, Malayan Civil Service, for Permission to Study for the Third (Proficiency) Standard in Malay,” July 3, 1936, Malaysian National Archives; “1957/0536574: Medium Car Allowance to Mr. C.W. Lyle Asst Protector of Chinese, Pahang,” February 1, 1939, Malaysian National Archives; “HKRS365-1-246-8: Hong Kong’s Personalities - Mr. David Ronald Holmes, CBE, MC, ED, JP, MA (Cantab), 1966,” 1966, Hong Kong Public Record Office. The reports on probationers were sent along with their complete dossier on appointment or transfer. Perryman to Flood, 9/15/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 125. 62 Henrika Kuklick, The Imperial Bureaucrat: The Colonial Administrative Service in the Gold Coast, 1920-1939 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1979); Anthony H. M. Kirk-Greene, “‘Taking Canada into Partnership in “The White Man”s Burden’ ‘: The British Colonial Service and the Dominion
26
Chapter Descriptions
Chapter Two, Ideologies and Initial Conflicts, explores the two primary
competing imperial ideologies of interwar Britain and the opening salvos between these
groups during Furse’s early attempts at reforming the colonial apparatus. Forward
imperialist thought battled with an older, competing ideology based on management and
keeping down costs, which I call laissez-faire traditionalism. This chapter will illuminate
the distinction between these two rival metropolitan discourses of Empire and how this
conflict played out in practice. What scholars show is that colonial rule was contested and
conflicted, both between colonizers and colonized and within the colonial state itself.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that forward imperialists’ purposefully and consistently co-
opted the vocabulary of indirect rule and trusteeship – its interwar political manifestation.
Furse’s training course at Oxbridge provided a foundation for this transformational
process. Beginning in 1927, newly recruited candidates to be the British imperial
representatives went through a yearlong period of training in formal programs at
Oxbridge. Chapter Two explores portions of this educational program and demonstrates
that this course laid the groundwork for a complex surveillance regime that allowed
London officials to monitor administrators throughout their careers.
Chapter Three, Rationalization of the Administration, demonstrates how Furse
simultaneously quelled the remaining administrative competitors in the Colonial Office.
Furse and his allies were able to silence and sideline critics with bureaucratic
maneuvering and then quickly solidify their positions through comprehensive reforms to
the administrative apparatus of the Empire. At the same time, he consolidated the power
Selection Scheme of 1923,” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 15, no. 1 (January 1, 1981): 33–46, doi:10.2307/485128.
27
of hiring, training, tracking and promoting administrators into his own hands with his
system of surveillance. Three discreet but related groups of opponents stood in his way:
the colonial governments (e.g. Nigeria, Kenya, etc.), the competing imperial services
(Sudan Civil Service, India Civil Service and the Eastern Cadetships like Malaya), and
the obstructionist laissez-faire traditionalists embedded within the Colonial Office and
around the Empire. Using informal and formal methods (notably the Warren Fisher
Committee initiated by Amery in 1929 to unify the Colonial Services) and missteps by
his rivals, Furse slowly gained power over recruitment and training. Once he sidelined,
co-opted or merely silenced his opponents, he moved quickly to centralize power into his
own hands. With the help of Amery, Furse codified the tasks he performed, centralized
all hiring and training of administrators around the Empire – starting in Africa but
eventually moving into Southeast Asia and the western Pacific territories – and initiated
the formal unification of the Colonial Service. These various processes of centralization
rapidly transformed the administrative apparatus of Empire during the interwar period
and slowly homogenized imperial discourses about the ideal Empire.
While centralizing power formally and informally during the late 1920s and early
1930s, Furse created and maintained an increasingly comprehensive surveillance regime,
tracking the movement and progress of each employee of the Empire. With this
information, he was able to insert himself into discussions over promotions and transfers.
This new system of surveillance marked useful administrators for future success and, at
the same time, banished less useful administrators to outer posts – or, in a few isolated
cases, revoked their appointments. The course became an important tool to monitor,
reward, and punish administrators. Dossiers compiled on new probationers would quickly
28
become one of the primary documents that determined the administrators’ career paths,
determining their suitability for promotions, transfers, or, in many cases, if they were left
in outlying districts for the majority of their careers. This new approach to tracking
administrators rewarded pliable gentlemanly administrators with optimal initial postings
that led to careers fast-tracked to positions of power in the imperial apparatus. Furse took
advantage of two correlating processes during the early 1930s, the enactment of the
Warren Fisher reforms (aimed at consolidating the colonial services) and the economic
slowdown, to force senior administrators within the colonial service to retire. This, in
theory, would make way for a fresh batch of presumably indoctrinated administrators,
some of whom were marked for success early on in their careers.
Chapter Four, Ideal Traits, shows that Furse believed that certain character traits
were integral to the creation of his new imperial system. The centralization of recruitment
would allow the ideal administrator to fill the lower echelon of the colonial civil services.
The traits of this ideal administrator for the forward imperialists seem straightforward:
being a young man in his early twenties; racially, white British; unmarried; and attending
Oxbridge (prior to admission to Furse’s training program), where he would receive the
proper training to have the right aristocratic gentlemanly qualities. However, the
heterogeneous nature of recruitment before Furse’s role solidified meant that many
administrators were local hires. Adventurers, settlers, former soldiers or hunters were
often hired as stopgap measures, or simply because they were easy to recruit. These hires
would often stay on and slowly move up through the ranks, frustrating those who wished
to have more centralized control – even if that control meant from a colonial capital city
like Nairobi or Lagos, if not London. Although some of these administrators had many of
29
the preferred traits, the lack of control over placements irked Furse and Amery.
Therefore, control of hires was crucial for Furse’s goals of centralization and uniformity
to succeed. His ideal traits helped frame the preferences for administrators picked to fill
the ranks by forward imperialists. Hence, white British young men were optimal because
of the goal of centralized control and power, in addition to the entrenched racism inherent
in modern European Empires.63
Furse set up recruitment apparatuses around the British Empire, including in
universities around Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, to find proper “British”
representatives and exclude those of untrustworthy or questionable “stock” – e.g. French
Canadians and South African Boers. This dissertation will show the inconsistency of
conceptions of “Britishness” when high-level imperial bureaucrats sought to construct an
image of Britishness projected across the Empire. For example, Australians and New
Zealanders had little trouble applying as “British,” whereas Boer South Africans and
French Canadians had numerous bureaucratic hoops to jump through. With this complex
recruitment machinery and his role increasingly formalized, Furse set about codifying the
proper traits of imperial representatives. His ideal candidate embodied Victorian
manliness based on sophisticated aristocratic gentility instead of the virile, physical and
muscular masculine traits that were becoming prevalent in other English-speaking
countries after the war, notably the United States. Youth was preferred because of the
lack of imperial knowledge and thus the malleability of young inexperienced men.
Finally, Furse and others identified whiteness with Britishness due to questions about the
63 A number of works have explored the construction of imperial racism, with the most influential being Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said, Orientalism.
30
trustworthiness of non-British white European groups that arose during World War I,
especially German and Boer descendants.
Although Furse’s recruitment regime increasingly stabilized throughout the 1920s
and was formally enacted by the mid 1930s, Furse’s reforms ultimately stalled. Chapter
Five, Ramifications, demonstrates how Furse’s Oxbridge training year failed to instill a
developmental mindset in probationers once they were in the field, how the attempts to
professionalize the administration were half-hearted, how these failures translated on the
ground, and how larger geopolitical changes altered how the Empire functioned during
the 1930s. Furse’s insistence on keeping aspects of a patronage system meant that he as
an individual was a lynchpin but also a weak point. Without him, reforms could not go
through, but those reforms were lukewarm and did not fully transform into a professional
and uniform system because of Furse’s increasingly important role. His continued
reliance on vague traits and personality meant that he placed a Victorian ideal
administrator into an interwar world – thus placing the same types of individuals that
prevented centralized control in the first place. In other words, he reinforced the corps of
entrenched obstructionists that he had spent so long trying to root out. These attempts at
reform sputtered due to the Depression (meaning a lack of funds for grand developmental
plans) and completely stalled with the outbreak of war in 1939. However, Furse did set
up a system that could be utilized after 1945 to promote a developmental ideal and was
able to force out unwilling older administrators due to retrenchment policies during the
Depression.
31
CHAPTER TWO: IDEOLOGIES AND INITIAL CONFLICTS
The Ideological Debate: Forward Imperialists and Laissez-Faire Traditionalists
In 1919, Britain emerged from the chaos and upheaval of the First World War
victorious but, some political ideologues firmly asserted, wounded. As a “heal” for such
wounds, Alfred Milner and Leopold Amery, after joining the British wartime coalition
government under David Lloyd George respectively as Secretary and Undersecretary of
State for the Colonies, attempted a number of reforms in efforts to economically develop
and unify the Empire’s disparate parts. Their policies to achieve these goals concentrated
on central planning and control with the ultimate idea of creating a single economic unit
out of the British Empire. They found a useful collaborator in Ralph Furse, the Secretary
for Appointments in the Colonial Office – a mid-level staff position that up until the early
1920s served mainly to facilitate appointments to patronage positions in the Empire.
These political ideologues, all forward imperialists (a contemporary political term),
sought a forward or constructive approach to an Empire actively managed and controlled
from Britain.1 The post-war economic plight of Britain made the provision of public
capital for development less certain, but, at the same time, focused attention on how to
develop the “colonial estate” so as to harness it to assist Britain’s recovery.2 Forward
1 Simon J. Potter, “Constructive Imperialism, State Intervention, and the Press,” in News and the British World (Oxford University Press, 2003), http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265121.001.0001/acprof-9780199265121. 2 Michael Havinden and David Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960 (London: Routledge, 1993), 115.
32
imperialists sought comfort in the economic potential of Britain’s far flung and – as they
believed – oft-neglected Empire. The Empire, especially British colonial African
territories, could help Britain recover from the War by providing raw materials for British
industrial production and markets for British finished goods, but only if properly
managed. Forward imperialists fought a rearguard action against their pre-war foes, the
laissez-faire traditionalists. Traditionalists allowed for industrial development and
economic exploitation by private individuals and corporations. The role of the colonial
state was to manage competing groups in an attempt to provide stable colonial rule,
traditionalists believed.
This chapter will illuminate the distinction between these two rival metropolitan
discourses of Empire and how this conflict played out in practice. Forward imperialists
sought an actively managed and centralized approach to Empire, whereas the
traditionalists believed in local industry and extraction with little centralized direction.
Both of these discourses shifted once applied on the ground, as imperial ideals and the
reality on the ground were two very different systems of rule. These conflicts played out
in the realm of policy, first with the introduction of reforms to the recruitment of new
colonial administrative personnel, the introduction of a training course at Oxford and
Cambridge for new probationers and the creation of an increasingly complex surveillance
regime. These reforms and the responses that various political and Colonial Office elites
had to them reflect how ideological debates played out in practice. These reforms, once
enacted, allowed Furse and his allies to marginalize the traditionalists from administrative
policy decisions by the early 1930s.
33
The Empire in 1919
A basic grasp of how the colonial Empire operated is needed to understand the
forward imperialists’ need for reform. The Colonial Office and Colonial Service in 1919,
despite their similar nomenclature, were separate institutions. Anthony Kirk-Greene is
quick to point out that this difference is critical to understand the colonial apparatus.3 The
Colonial Office had the administrative responsibilities of representing all of the Empire’s
disparate parts in London - except for India, which was run by the Indian Office; Sudan
and Egypt, which were run by the Foreign Office; and Eastern colonies like Malaya,
Hong Kong, and Ceylon, which were also run by the India Office. Hence, there were
three main imperial services: the Indian Civil Service, the Sudan Political Service, and
the Colonial Service. The Colonial Office’s authority was limited, furthermore, as
administrators on the ground handled the day-to-day operations of each colony. The
Colonial Office’s most important role was to provide advocates for the colonies in
London, especially on fiscal matters (e.g. battling with an oft-noncompliant Treasury).
There were other sources of division. Hiring for non-administrative branches like
Medical, Education, and Police was generally under the control of the Colonial Secretary.
However, the Crown Agents for the Colonies, a separate body from the Colonial Office
who acted on behalf of the individual colonies, handled Public Works, Railways and
Marine Departments hiring.
To add to the confusion, no central authority truly had a complete understanding
of the entire Empire until a comprehensive report came out in 1935, while another report
did not arrive until 1950. In 1935, there were only 1,330 administrative officers in the
3 A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858-1966 (Houndmills [England]: Macmillan Press, 2000), 45.
34
entire Colonial Service, excluding the West Indies, Cyprus and Palestine, 1,065 of whom
served in Africa. There were only 217 administrative officers in Asia outside of India – of
whom 184 were in Malaya, 33 were in Hong Kong and 27 in Fiji and the Western
Pacific. In Nigeria, which dominated the administrative service in Africa, approximately
400 district officers “ruled” over 20 million African inhabitants. Tanganyika had the
second largest contingent with 175 administrators, followed by Kenya (128), Gold Coast
(89), Northern Rhodesia (88) and Uganda (85). In the late 1930s, the ratio of Colonial
Administrative Officers to the African colonial population in tropical Africa was
approximately 1:35,000. Comparatively, the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.) had 250
districts with around 1,000 civil servants charged with administrating 200 million
inhabitants across an area of one million square miles. The Sudan Political Service was
always very small, with just 125 officials over a less densely populated one million
square miles of territory. During the interwar years, the administrative service formed
roughly a quarter of the total membership of the Colonial Service, with the majority of
recruits going to the professional branches like Agricultural, Medical and Veterinary.
From 1919-1943, only 1,840 men joined the administrative branches compared to 7,089
in the other branches. White Europeans thinly staffed the Colonial Service in general – in
1950, white Europeans made up about 5% of the 300,000 employees of the Colonial
Service. The local populace filled the vast majority of junior positions like clerks. In
1950, including all branches (e.g. administrative and technical), about 15,000 white
Colonial Service officers operated around the Empire, with around 10,000 in Africa,
3,000 in the Far East and 1,000 in the West Indies.4
4 Nile Taro Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire: The British Colonial Administrative Service, 1919-1954” (Ph.D., Yale University, 1998), 2–6, 33,
35
Although the salaries of colonial civil servants were paid entirely out the budgets
of the individual colonies, the Colonial Secretary in London filled most colonial positions
staffed by white Europeans at the behest of the colonies themselves. An appointed Private
Secretary (Appointments) filled these postings; this was Furse’s position. The Private
Secretary worked at the pleasure of the Colonial Secretary and was not a staffer of the
Colonial Office, even though the Colonial Secretary headed the Colonial Office. Often
times, candidates for local positions were pre-selected by colonies and the appointments
secretary would therefore merely process a candidate’s paperwork. Each colony had its
own requirements and preferences, which often differed from those of other colonies,
thus creating a hodgepodge of administrative traits around the globe. Furse sought to
gradually control these disparate processes and collect power into his own hands. He
diminished the power of colonies and protectorates by handling their hiring decisions,
increased the Colonial Office’s power over the rival imperial services, and co-opted allies
and sidelined critics within the Colonial Office itself.
Forward Imperialists
Although finally achieving their goals during the interwar period, forward
imperialist politicians had been in British political circles since the late 19th century.
Motivated in part by geopolitics, at that time forward imperialists promoted the active
development of colonies to make them economic assets, therefore strengthening Britain’s
position in the world when larger, more populous Empires like Germany and the United
States were challenging it. Forward imperialists pressed for a closer union with portions
of the Empire, including the Dominions and the dependent territories, in order to allow
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36
Britain to better competes during its “relative decline.”5 Forward imperialists regarded
Empire as central to all they stood for, and imperialism to them held, as George Abbott
argues, “all the depth and comprehensiveness of a religious faith.” 6 That faith was
formed around two negative arguments. The first was against free trade, a cornerstone of
Victorian British economic policy. Forward imperialists saw free trade as part of a
constrained political system focused on Britain alone and wished instead to shift towards
a greater, more integrated Empire. The second negative was against mid-Victorian non-
interventionism. “Little Englanders” who wished for a less intrusive role around the
world promoted administrative nihilism due to their lack of guidance. Forward
imperialists sought to make the Empire the “Unit of Consideration” instead of narrowly
focusing on Britain itself.7
The concept that British colonial Africa needed centralized economic
development became prominent in British political circles after 1895 with the rise of
Joseph Chamberlain as Secretary of State for the Colonies. Chamberlain believed that the
imperial government should promote colonial economic development as a way to
strengthen Britain in the competition between industrialized nations. In a famous speech
in 1895, Chamberlain justified the centralized management of the economic development
of the colonies. What would a large landlord do with undeveloped possessions like the
British territories around the globe, Chamberlain rhetorically asked? The answer was
obvious: a landlord would improve his property to generate income.8 Thus, Britain should
5 Potter, “Constructive Imperialism, State Intervention, and the Press.” 6 George Abbott, “A Re-Examination of the 1929 Colonial Development Act,” Economic History Review 24, no. 1 (February 1971): 68. 7 E. H. H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the Conservative Party, 1880-1914 (Routledge, 2005), 167. 8 Abbott, “A Re-Examination of the 1929 Colonial Development Act,” 68.
37
manage the territories it controlled and governed by promoting economic growth and
creating markets for the agricultural and mineral products of the Empire. This went hand
and hand with a vernacular shift: uplifting the material lives of colonial subjects
gradually replaced the earlier civilizing mission rhetoric.
To further his grand plans for the Empire, Chamberlain proposed reforms during
his tenure (1895-1903) to the imperial administrative branches in order to have a more
rational and controllable apparatus to run the Empire’s disparate parts. Administrative
silos hindered cooperation. For example, the administrative service and the technical
branches like agricultural and veterinary were separate entities within each colony and
each colony was administrated independently of other colonies. A cornerstone of the
attempt to unify these branches was the introduction of a course, taken in London before
an appointee went out on appointment. Chamberlain wanted training to spread technical
knowledge in the administrative branch of the colonial services, therefore encouraging
more cross-departmental cooperation in order to facilitate economic development.9
However, the course did not commence until 1908, five years after Chamberlain left
office. Staffers who took charge of the course did not see it as an ideological training
ground. Instead, they placed a semi-public organization focused on imperial scientific
research, the Imperial Institute in charge of the course in large part because it had the
physical space for students and already focused on some of the needed topics. Optimally,
a colony would hire a recruit and then that recruit would take a two to three month course
before going out into the field. Topics like accounting, African languages and phonetics,
tropical hygiene and sanitation, ethnology and tropical resources were included in the
9 A. H. M Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837-1997 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 16–18.
38
curriculum, as well as international and Islamic law. Training was executed in a way that
focused on imparting technical knowledge of the most useful facets of fieldwork, like
tropical medicine (e.g. to prevent disease). It ignored the important (to Chamberlain)
roles other departments, like forestry, education and agriculture, played in the economic
development of the Empire. The course occurred infrequently and many recruits would
not even enroll before going into the field. Only one individual lecturer taught every
subject by 1912 and the course only occurred once that year.10 In March 1914, staffers
summarily suspended and defunded the course due to a lack of administrators taking it.11
Although the Colonial Office gave an annual grant of £225 for running the course, the
Institute spent a mere £34 on the fees for the only part-time instructor, or slightly more
than that paid annually to its telephone boy.12 The Institute argued that the total cost of
running the course was more, but it could not provide an accurate accounting (or any
accounting it seems) for the Colonial Office during the autumn of 1914. By this time,
World War I had commenced, thereby cancelling any new positions and therefore the
course’s purpose.13
Alfred Milner, as Governor of the Cape Colony (1897-1901) and then, during the
Boer War, the Governor of the annexed Transvaal and Orange River Colony (1901-
1905), agreed with Chamberlain about the need for active economic development of the
Empire. He believed that colonies needed large-scale, white managed economic
10 “CO 323/680/58: West Africa and East Africa. Tropical African Services Course: Comments on the Proposed Suspension,” May 11, 1915, National Archives, Kew, National Archives. 11 “CO 323/680/48: Tropical African Services Course: Estimates of Expenditure for the Year 1915/1916. Original Correspondence From: Imperial Institute,” May 31, 1915, National Archives, Kew, National Archives. 12 Out of a total budget of £12,541, this held for the 1911-1914 annual years. “PRO 30/76/180: Provision of Funds at Imperial Institute,” 1912, National Archives, Kew. 13 “CO 323/680/48: Tropical African Services Course: Estimates of Expenditure for the Year 1915/1916. Original Correspondence From: Imperial Institute.”
39
development to uplift colonial subjects. To achieve this goal, Milner encouraged white
settlement in newly acquired areas under his administration like Southern Rhodesia.14
Although Milner felt the brutal methods of establishing control in Rhodesia were
unfortunate, he wrote in 1897 that “it would be a disgrace to the white man if that land
were not a better land to live in, even for the native races, than it was under their old
savage rulers.”15 Therefore, Milner believed the best and highest purpose of African lands
and Africans was managed economic development using African labor. He distrusted
Africans on the grounds of the incompetence of an inferior race, saw them as
unproductive, and not fit to rule themselves.16 However, they could be economic assets
for the creation of large-scale, white-led development. Soon after the Boer War broke out
in 1899, Milner declared that the ultimate goal in South Africa was “a self-governing
white community, supported by well-treated and justly-governed black labour from Cape
Town to Zambezi.”17 Milner’s retirement due to health issues in 1905 and Chamberlain’s
resignation two years earlier because of his promotion of Imperial Preference (higher
tariffs on non-Empire goods) stalled their grand plans for Southern Africa and the
Empire.
The forward imperialists were out of political power in Britain for almost fifteen
years. However, the destruction and disruption caused by World War I allowed forward
imperialists to try to transform the Empire into an economic asset once again after the
war was over. Britain was weakened and there were anticolonial and nationalist groups
14 Stephen Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 1914-1940 (London: F. Cass, 1984), 63. 15 As quoted in J. Lee Thompson, A Wider Patriotism: Alfred Milner and the British Empire (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007), 75, 76. 16 Porter, The Lion’s Share, 178. 17 Thompson, A Wider Patriotism, 77.
40
gaining in strength around the Empire.18 A new approach, forward imperialists argued,
would unite the Empire as a grand economic unit. The Conservative party dominated a
coalition under David Lloyd George that included forward imperialists like Milner,
Amery, Lord Curzon (the former Viceroy of India), and Chamberlain’s son Austen in
powerful positions. Once appointed to high political office during the war, Milner, with
the help of his political understudy Amery, set about quickly to execute plans and
schemes to economically develop and politically unify the Empire. “The main task with
which the Colonial Office will be confronted after the war,” wrote Amery in 1918, “will
be the development of a great African Empire.”19 Shipping needed to expand and
certainly could do so “once a general policy of Empire development gives [shipping
companies] confidence and a direct lead.” Amery declared in a later speech that railway
development around the Empire and above all in Africa needed to follow Joseph
Chamberlain’s original bold and comprehensive plan.20 A cornerstone of Amery’s plans
for imperial unification was the economic development of the British African colonies,
mandates and protectorates in order to provide raw materials for the industrialized parts
of the Empire.
Forward imperialists passed a number of reforms under the coalition - like the
Soldier Settlement Act (1919) and the expanded Empire Settlement Act (1922), which
Milner influenced and Amery executed during their time in office.21 In March 1919, the
18 Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2007). 19 “AMEL 1/3/55: The Future of the Imperial Cabinet System.,” 1918, Churchill Archive, Churchill Archives Centre. 20 LSA speech to Royal Colonial Institute, 2/10/1925. “AMEL 1/4/12:Prints, Press-Cuttings and Texts of Speeches by LSA Relating to the Empire,” n.d., 72, Churchill Archive, Churchill Archives Centre. 21 For example C. J. Duder, “‘Men of the Officer Class’: The Participants in the 1919 Soldier Settlement Scheme in Kenya,” African Affairs 92, no. 366 (January 1993): 69–87.
41
British Cabinet approved the formation of the Overseas Development Committee, which
would create a scheme to settle ex-servicemen. The Soldier Settlement Act aimed to
populate African colonies with a “human sea” of whites to create a working, productive
community supported by readily available and cheap African labor.22 The Act offered ex-
army officers very cheap and large plots of land throughout the Empire in places like
Australia and Kenya.23 Three years later, the British Parliament expanded the scheme to
cover non-servicemen with the passage of the Empire Settlement Act. Both Amery and
Milner promoted these Acts and labored to assist emigration to and the economic
development of the Empire.24 In Africa, Amery believed in a comprehensive policy to
deliberately reconstitute the Africans as agricultural workers for the enlarged white settler
population. The result would be a working community in which there was always a
supply of cheap labor available. This focus on agricultural development was purposeful.
Amery believed that the only true foundation of all industrial wealth and employment
was the development of agriculture. Therefore, the Acts were but one step in
redistributing the British population away from overcrowded metropolitan cities into the
“empty” (of white Europeans) parts of the Empire.25
22 C. J. Duder, “‘Men of the Officer Class’: The Participants in the 1919 Soldier Settlement Scheme in Kenya,” African Affairs 92, no. 366 (January 1, 1993): 170. 23 As early as February 1919, Amery was imagining an expansion of white settlement areas into newly acquired German East Africa and German Nyasaland. “26 February 1919 diary entry.” L. S Amery, The Leo Amery Diaries, ed. John Barnes and David Nicholson (London: Hutchinson, 1980), 257. 24 Although Milner resigned from office in 1921, Amery stayed on at the Colonial Office until 1922, moving over to the Admiralty during the Conservative administrations of Andrew Bonar Law (1922-23) and Stanly Baldwin (1923-24). He advanced the Empire Settlement Act in both positions. When appointed to the Admiralty in 1922, Amery wrote in his diary, “I shall no doubt continue to carry on Empire Settlement…” and he continued to bring up the subject during Cabinet meetings. Thompson, A Wider Patriotism, 175; Amery, The Leo Amery Diaries, 309. 25 Even though Ireland was a Dominion after independence in 1922, it never figured int the thinking of the forward imperialists. Amery speech to the Royal Colonial Institute, 2/10/1925. “AMEL 1/4/12:Prints, Press-Cuttings and Texts of Speeches by LSA Relating to the Empire.”
42
The forward imperialists concentrated on central planning and control. The
importance of imperial development meant that there must be a determined effort by all
the governments involved – British, Dominion (the white settled and self-governed
countries of Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) and colonial – if any of
these schemes were to succeed.26 Amery wished to divide the British African territories
into two parts to facilitate planning. British Western Africa featured large scale African
production of goods like coffee and cocoa, whereas many Central and Eastern African
territories contained a small white population that could take part in economic
development and administration.27 A central imperial government could plan railroads
and the development of natural resources speedily in Central and Eastern Africa.28
Governments acting independently were an impediment to progress, as these would likely
act on divergent lines. The British government should create a company along the lines of
the failed charter companies of the late 19th century to manage and centralize
development.29 Properly planned and executed agricultural production would create
products that would be efficiently transported to industrial markets via rail while creating
new consumer markets for industrial goods, hence benefiting the Empire as a whole.
For these ideas to gain a foothold, Amery later argued in 1924, those in power and the
general population needed to get away from a
26 Amery speech to the Royal Colonial Institute, 2/10/1925. Ibid., 25. 27 Central and Eastern Africa included Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, the newly expanded British East Africa, and Uganda. Amery to Milner, 11/11/1919. “AMEL 1/3/42: Lord Milner Papers: Correspondence. Letters and Minutes between LSA and Milner,” n.d., 133, Churchill Archives Centre. 28 This should follow Joseph Chamberlain’s original bold plan of connecting the various territories of British Africa, Amery argued. Amery speech to the Royal Colonial Institute, 2/10/1925. “AMEL 1/4/12:Prints, Press-Cuttings and Texts of Speeches by LSA Relating to the Empire,” 32. 29 Amery to Milner, 11/11/1919. “AMEL 1/3/42: Lord Milner Papers: Correspondence. Letters and Minutes between LSA and Milner,” 133.
43
Purely local attitude, from our class divisions, from our Industrial disputes, from our party disputes, and even from the more narrow national outlook, and get the broad outlook of a co-operative Commonwealth that embraces countries far apart from each other, different races, different religions, and different degrees of civilisation…these will bring a wider outlook, a toleration for and understanding of the difficulties and problems of others.30 Amery inspired Furse, Milner’s private secretary for appointments, during a 1920
meeting and brought him over to his cause. Furse later recalled that he listened in silence
as Amery and another forward imperialist spoke about the Empire. Furse realized, he
wrote in his memoirs, that “the ideal of imperial solidarity had seemed to me one of the
most fruitful that an Englishman could work for.” He continued, “nothing so potently
fuses together men of different background and antecedents as setting them to row in the
same boat, if possible against a strong and dangerous current.”31 In his own reports, Furse
aped the forward imperialist vernacular and ideology, declaring in 1920 that he hoped
that the non-self-governing dependencies would continue to play an expanding role in the
imperial economy, “which they are destined to play, if properly developed, even within
the official lifetime of any one now entering the [Colonial] Service.”32 By 1929 he was
even more explicitly utilizing forward imperial vocabulary, stating that there was a
growing tendency to consider the territories of the Empire, especially economically and
scientifically, as a “single estate.”33
30 LSA Speech to The Over-Seas League Luncheon for LSA, 12/5/1924. “AMEL 1/4/12:Prints, Press-Cuttings and Texts of Speeches by LSA Relating to the Empire,” 72. 31 Ralph Dolignon Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 74. 32 Colonial Office Conference, 1927: Memorandum by Furse on Recruitment and Training of Colonial Civil Servants. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” n.d., 29, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 33 First Memorandum Prepared by Furse for the Warren Fisher Committee, 4/27/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” n.d., 16, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
44
To further the centralization of actual and perceived power in his position and that
of the Colonial Office vis-à-vis the Colonial services, Furse outlined his short and
medium term plans for the reform of the colonial civil service in a February 1921 letter to
Amery. He argued that they needed to slowly transform the colonial administration in
order to depoliticize it and undermine the existence of rogue or obstructionist appointees.
A “flexible, homogenous, highly trained service” would take “some years and much
work” to create, he said. Optimally, this Service would be akin to the Army of the “Last
Hundred Days” of World War I – a professional, efficient single unit encompassing the
Empire’s disparate parts (like King Edward’s Horse). To further these goals, Furse’s
responsibility had already been expanded during Milner’s tenure as Colonial Secretary to
include appointments to the education departments of Malaya, Nigeria, Tanganyika and
the Gold Coast.34 By 1926, he also recruited for the education departments of Sierra
Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Gambia, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Zanzibar.35 Furse’s
office also began to recruit for the various League of Nations mandates that had come
under Britain’s control after the war, like Mesopotamia. Technically these were not
colonial possessions, but in reality they were part of the dependent Empire. This was
merely streamlining processes, Furse argued. If an applicant was interested in colonial
service in general and wanted to apply to multiple positions, Furse could more easily
direct applicants towards colonies with openings.36 However, these changes still had the
result of greatly expanding the scope and responsibility of Furse’s position.
34 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” n.d., 83, 92, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 35 Harding minute, 3/9/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 1926, 11, National Archives, Kew. 36 Furse minute, 4/13/1921. “CO 877/1/56909: Appointments for Ex-Officers of Mesopotamia Civil Administration,” n.d., 10–12, National Archives, Kew. Milner’s office responded to a request for officers
45
Furse consistently pitched his maneuvers as bureaucratic in nature; therefore, they
did not attract much attention. Additionally, appointments to the politically important
administrative positions were still in the purview of the colonies and protectorates
themselves. Controlling those appointments be much more difficult because of the need
to overcome objections. Nonetheless, Furse and Amery were unable to initiate such a
radical change during the early 1920s. Promoting administrators within a newly united
Colonial Service eventually became a cornerstone of their reforms because of their fears
of non-forward imperialist placements. This inferior element included political
appointees that Amery and Furse thought too “pro native” and therefore dangerous – both
from left wing/Labour groups worldwide and from the previously dominant laissez-faire
traditionalists who remained well represented within the imperial apparatus. Furse argued
that if there could be a general leveling up of the standard of those in the Colonial
Services, then he and Amery could implement more merit-based systems of promotion.
This would allow the services to shed inferior men at the top while building up with
sound men from below. The key to this process was hindering “unwise or interested”
appointments.37 Furse and Amery introduced these reforms as bureaucratic in nature,
with little fanfare. Furse consistently downplayed his schemes to pacify opposition and
did not want any publicity that could “lead to opposition in certain interested quarters.”38
from Mesopotamia, stating that the Assistant Private Secretary for Appointments should interview all candidates for appointments in the colonial service before they would be considered serious candidates. Furse could deal with any further issues. Grindle to Undersecretary of State for India Political Office, 12/24/1920. Ibid., 18. 37 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 85. 38 Furse memo, 1/1/1924. “CO 877/2/616: Selection of Canadian Graduates: Report of Second Tour by Major Furse,” 1923, 14, National Archives, Kew. In speaking of another reform during the period, Furse argued that beyond the Universities and “Imperial affairs” groups, “we did not want more publicity than could be helped, as it was important to avoid the press making a stunt of the scheme.”
46
Hence, other interested parties likely ignored the reforms in part because Furse and
Amery purposely underemphasized their importance.
To remove and prevent further obstructionist placements, unification of the civil
service became a real goal for the forward imperialists. In his February 1921 letter, Furse
visualized “a single Colonial Service providing opportunities for transfer and accelerated
promotion in different Colonies, especially in the higher grades.” This could lead to
better work and “less stagnation.” Those administrators in the higher grades presented a
problem at the time he wrote because of the heterogeneous nature of the administrative
services. Because each colony handled its own recruitment and promotion during the first
few grades, a central authority could not track administrators very well. However, Furse
and Amery believed that a single Colonial Service could allow for transfer and
accelerated promotion among various colonies. For example, a recruit could do his first
tour as an assistant district officer, essentially an apprenticeship, in a remote district of
Kenya; his second in the governor’s office of Nigeria; then be promoted to district officer
in charge of his own district in Tanganyika for his third tour. This could allow for much
greater central control, as well as diversity of experience. Once implemented, Furse even
hoped that after ten years the older, less pliable element in the services would “largely
work itself out by retirement” and, if there were real improvements to the junior
appointments over a few years, “we ought…to have a very fine service.”39
Furse’s system, albeit with a variety of fits and starts, gradually took shape over
the interwar years. By the mid-1930s, he was personally responsible for the hiring of new
administrators around the globe, including Tropical African, Southeast Asian, and Pacific
39 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 82–84.
47
colonies and protectorates. First, however, he and his allies had to confront entrenched
opposition to their plans and limit the ability for these traditionalists to interfere.
The Laissez-Faire Traditionalists
Furse and Amery represented a new approach to Empire – one based on investing
in it and its personnel rather than simply minimizing costs. Thus, Furse and his allies
were not without their critics. An older mindset of managing instead of meddling in the
Empire threatened forward imperialist plans. This system of laissez-faire administration
had little ideological cohesion because of the multiple ways colonial governments
recruited and selected administrators. Generally, each colony would recruit and train their
own administrators, leading to a highly heterogeneous group.40 In general, these
administrators downplayed policies that could anger the colonial population in their
districts. Administrators writ large often rebuffed various attempts at central control
because of this predominant laissez-faire tradition. These influential and powerful elites
in the colonies and their counterparts in the Colonial Office believed in keeping costs low
and maintaining the status quo above all else. These traditionalists generally opposed the
various schemes and approaches to Empire that called for increased costs, including plans
for active economic development that could spark costly (in both fiscal and moral terms)
anti-colonial resistance. Colonial subjects challenged a more activist approach to Empire,
especially in various strikes in the 1930s around the colonial Empire. This rising social
unrest sparked a rethink of colonial policy. Traditionalists, who had based their policies
on the countryside, found themselves on the defensive in the rapidly expanding colonial
40 This being the central argument of Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire.”
48
cities.41 These traditionalists argued consistently for the importance of a lightly managed
approach to colonial rule that sought political stability above economic management, thus
threatening Furse and Amery’s ideal of Empire.
Exploring a single colony, Kenya, will briefly illuminate how a laissez-faire
Empire operated. Featuring white settled areas and stretches populated only by Africans,
Kenya displayed a variety of administrative goals and functions. Administrators who
initially populated Kenya during the late 19th century were more interested in hunting and
exploring the protectorate instead of thinking about larger issues like development. The
papers of Francis Hall, a District Officer from 1892-1899, are filled with stories of going
on hunts and safari, while minimal attention is given to developmental or economic
questions. Later administrators reflect the same story, as the papers of Col. John
Llewellin (who served from 1914-17) describe hunting and going on safari as much as
possible. Starting service in 1920, Donald Storris Fox and John Horace Clive both
described hunting and safari trips as the “attractive part of the District Officers’ life.”42
Administrative responsibility for the colony changed over the years, from a private
company to the Foreign Office and finally the Colonial Office in 1905. Once the private
company was dissolved in 1894, the vast majority of officials stayed on and came under
the Foreign Office from 1894-1905.43 These officials were a mixed bag of amateurs and
41 Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), 2. 42 “Hall to Hall (father)”, August 15, 1892, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Letters of Francis George Hall, IBEAC. MS 225864; Donald Storris Fox, “Storris Fox to Mother”, July 19, 1920, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Donald Storris Fox Papers, MSS.Afr.s.1029; John Horace Clive, “A Cure for Insomnia: Reminiscences of Administration in Kenya”, n.d., 56, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Clive Papers, MSS.Afr.s.678. 43 Thomas Cashmore, “Your Obedient Servant”, 1964, 26, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Cashmore Papers, MSS.Afr.s.1034.
49
adventurers. William Mackinnon, the head of the company, had received numerous
requests to join the company from young men and their sponsors. As a Scot, Mackinnon
had hired many of his countrymen for posts in his East Africa venture. These ranged from
grocery managers to sons of superintendents to numerous “struggling junior clerk(s) in a
Glasgow merchant’s office,” all with little experience in administration or the Empire
before signing on.44 These inexperienced young men filled the administrative roles of the
company and many served similar functions for the Foreign and later Colonial Offices.
Former company agents in some cases served for decades after the transfer. In
1897, out of 20 higher-ranking officers in Kenya, 15 were former servants of the
company. Little change of personnel on the ground occurred after the Colonial Office
took over in 1905. In March 1907, five of the six Provincial Commissioners who oversaw
large swaths of territory were former company men and there were still four in place in
1914.45 Until World War I many of the staff were from the company, leading the then
outgoing Governor of Kenya, Sir Percy Girouard, to complain of the lamentable quality
of several high administrators he had been saddled with. Administrators were generally
not university educated but by 1914 they had lots of experience in the African territories
they administered. Many were hunters, adventurers, or other characters when first
appointed who had come to the region before the British annexed it.46 Instead of wishing
to promote centralized schemes (in Kenya, this often meant helping white settlers set up
large scale and African labored farms), these administrators simply wished to preserve
law and order and collect taxes in order to have the minimal amount of work and 44 Ibid. “William Bennett to Mackinnon”, July 28, 1890, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), William Mackinnon Papers, PPM51/IBEA Box 76. “Hugh Brown to Mackinnon,” November 12, 1889. Ibid. “Alex McRae to Mackinnon,” November 1889. Ibid. 45 Cashmore, “Your Obedient Servant,” 34. 46 Miller, The Lunatic Express, 443, 444.
50
maximum amount of time to hunt and explore.47 Even by the end of World War I, after
the Colonial Office had run Kenya for a decade and a half and had brought in some
reforms, like preferring university-educated hires and requiring language skills, the ad
hoc nature of training meant that knowledge transfer happened on the ground. New hires
learned through an apprenticeship system in their districts from those who had formerly
held the position. Thus, the approach to imperial rule, even in the white-settled areas of
Kenya, focused on stability and low cost.
During the interwar period, the most prominent proponent of the traditional
laissez-faire approach was Lord F.D. Lugard.48 His political framework was simple
enough: local leaders (in Africa, “hereditary chiefs” were often used or many times
created) would act as useful intermediaries for local power, thus preserving in theory
some measure of local independence and at the same time providing stability. Thus,
cooperation between the chiefs and the administrative staff was the cornerstone of the
success of the system. A convenient political arrangement in order to cut costs and lessen
the occurrence of costly anticolonial resistance, this form of indirect rule was not new per
se – the British had used similar tactics in portions of India since the Battle of Plassey in
1757. A governor or local functionary representing the British Crown (in India between
the wars, the Viceroy) oversaw imperial prerogatives while local people (in India, the
princes ruling the states not directly under the Raj) handled other minor functions of
47 This mindset stuck with some later administrators, as a new recruit in 1920 later wrote, “the most attractive part of a District Officer’s life was safari.” Clive, “A Cure for Insomnia: Reminiscences of Administration in Kenya,” 56; Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000, 218; Miller, The Lunatic Express, 412–13. 48 F.D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1922).
51
government.49 Maintaining the status quo and the power of the man on the spot were
central imperial ideological goals, with the man on the spot, in theory, doing all in his
limited power to promote the well being of the subjects under his purview with as little
cost as possible to Britain. In all reality, in Africa this was a very direct form of rule, with
local colonial subjects working at the behest of British colonial officials, but many British
imperial ideologues firmly believed in Lugard’s system.
Traditionalists were not necessarily opposed to all changes in imperial rule, only
those that could easily upset the status quo. Thus, reforms to promote stability were
encouraged. For example, Lugard and his allies argued that the newly fashioned postwar
Education Departments were important branches of the colonial administration, because
education could play an important role in showing colonial subjects the benefits of even-
handed British imperial administration. Education Departments had the goal of gradually
providing some forms of basic education for colonial subjects, a task traditionally
reserved for groups like missionaries. Proponents like Lugard argued that if colonized
subjects understood the benefits of British rule, such as rule of law and evenhandedness,
they would be more likely to submit to British authority. Sir Frederick
Gordon Guggisberg, formerly the governor of the Gold Coast and an influential interwar
policy wonk, believed that for these reasons probationers at a new Oxbridge course must
understand the role of the Education Department and its functionaries in the field. He
49 For example, see: Ernst B. Haas, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress: The Dismal Fate of New Nations (Cornell University Press, 1997); P. J Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press, 1976); Robert Frykenberg, “India to 1858,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume V: Historiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 199–200.
52
even asserted that Education was the most important branch of colonial administration in
Africa.50
Ideological Conflicts Over Reforms
Forward imperialists and laissez-faire traditionalists found themselves on opposite
sides during a number of Furse’s attempts at reform during the early to mid 1920s, the
most important his changes to recruitment and training of new probationary
administrators. Forward imperialists were keen on undermining the power of
traditionalists once they turned to reforming the Empire after World War I. Milner and
Amery feared them after World War I. “You underestimate the still surviving strength of
the ‘Free Trade’ insanity,” Milner wrote to Amery in 1919, and “the universal
unreasoning irritation at Government interference of any kind.”51 In addition to
threatening the status quo, centralized developmental planning struck many
administrators as beyond the bounds of an imperial or even domestic metropolis’
responsibility. For example, administrators in Northern Nigeria were too “exclusive”
towards commercial interests for Amery’s taste. This situation would “have to be
modified and…the ideal of development will have to find room side by side with the
ideal of [the current system].”52 This older system featured administrators with various
ideals of imperial rule, some congruent with the forward imperialist ideal but many not.
Thus, the forward imperialists viewed many experienced administrators as hindrances to
be removed. Reforms to the recruitment and training of new administrators allowed Furse
to grab hold of sources of patronage throughout the Empire and set the foundation for 50 Guggisberg to Furse, 9/27/1927. “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 1927, 149, National Archives, Kew. 51 This letter is in regards to expanding palm oil imperial tariffs. Milner to Amery, 12/30/1919. “AMEL 1/3/42: Lord Milner Papers: Correspondence. Letters and Minutes between LSA and Milner,” 160. 52 Amery to Milner, 1/28/1920. Ibid., 189.
53
much wider and more radical changes during the 1930s. Amery and Milner helped Furse
move an important training course to Oxford and Cambridge (collectively, Oxbridge),
which had the effect of widely expanding Furse’s remit over the colonial services in
Africa. Once the course was settled at the universities, Furse was able to minimize the
role that traditionalists had in hiring, training, and placing new colonial administrators.
Although Furse ultimately had the goal of unifying the colonial services, his
options for doing so were limited the first few years after the war. Therefore, he focused
on recruitment and training of new administrators, hoping to flush the system of older,
unwanted ones. Furse agreed with his forward imperialist allies that the perceived
economic and social problems of Africa had to be dealt with quickly and added as early
as 1920 that the “successful solution will largely depend on the quality of the young men
who enter the Colonial Service.”53 Furse and his political allies utilized cloaked language
– “indirect rule,” “native rights” and “amateurism” – to circumnavigate the previously
dominant laissez-faire traditionalists. In 1919, training and selection were still generally
divorced from each other. Although nominally similar, the Colonial Office was based in
London where the Colonial Secretary and his underlings, including Furse, were located.
The Colonial Services were the on the ground administrative apparatus in each colony or
protectorate. They were two separate, albeit related, entities. However, since Furse
wanted to upgrade the process of selection of the on the ground administrators in order
for his plans for the centralization of the British colonial services to succeed, he
attempted to unify the colonial services as much as possible. Unifying them into one
entity would allow for the centralized promotion of administrators. After about a decade,
53 Furse to Vice Chancellor, Cambridge, 4/24/1920. “CO 877/1/37811: Tropical African Services Course,” n.d., 32, National Archives, Kew.
54
Furse thought, this process should flush the service of unwanted administrators. Furse
approached this process with caution so as not to arouse opposition to his plans. First, the
ability to hire was an important source of patronage for each colony and second, there
were entrenched elites that resisted change. His focus, at least during the first few years,
therefore continued to be about reforming recruitment. If he could fill the lower rungs of
the service, he believed he would eventually transform the entire apparatus. Improving
recruitment would “tend to prepare the way for the ideal of [colonial services]
unification.”54 Administrators in Africa could play a key role in the development of a
great African Empire, Furse firmly believed, if they were chosen carefully.55 For
example, Furse first attempted reform with agricultural appointments. In 1920, he sat as
the junior member on a committee looking into the training and recruitment of
agricultural officers. The committee’s final report argued that a comparatively small
outlay investing in capable agricultural officers would “yield a rich return to the
individual colonies in shape of increased revenue” and would increase the supply of raw
materials available for production that would enrich the entire Empire. For example,
competent, well-trained agricultural specialists could improve wheat cultivation in East
Africa, coffee farming in Uganda, and palm oil production in West Africa. These officers
would optimally work hand in hand with other departments. They needed full training in
plant breeding, physiology and pathology by a centralized program, however, if they
were to be successful.56
54 Memo by Furse on Training Course, 4/1/1920. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 62, 66. 55 Furse memo on training courses, 4/20/1920. Ibid., 70. 56 Report of the Committee for Staffing Agricultural Service for the Colonies, 1920 Ibid., 57.
55
The current training course at the Imperial Institute became a template of the
problems with the existing system of recruitment. The Institute held the course in a
London suburb, tucked away from the kinds of representatives of proper society that
would be found at Oxbridge. As a result, the course did not promote the colonial civil
services to possible recruits; it only served administrators who had already signed up to
the service knew of its existence. A new training course, held at Oxbridge, could help
with recruitment; it would act as an advertisement and lead others to apply. Moving the
course to Oxbridge would concentrate the colonial services towards Furse’s ideal: the
university gentleman. In the three years before the outbreak of war, the Colonial Office,
with the help of Furse, appointed 62% of administrative recruits from Oxbridge. Other
universities (e.g. the University of London) provided only 5% of recruits. This was close
to the kind of intake that Furse desired. Initial recruits, if well picked (by Furse of
course), would form a nucleus of recruits that would promote an interest in African
administration and attract other undergraduates. These first recruits could give informal
lectures on the life and conditions of Africa to new recruits under training that would be
open to others at the universities. Potential recruits, therefore, would know the service as
a “corps d’elite,” nurturing their interest in imperial service.57
In promoting this vision, Furse was copying courses in surveying, tropical
hygiene and anthropology that the Egyptian and Sudanese administrations were holding
at Oxford.58 Contacts in those services told Furse that these courses greatly helped the
supply of useful candidates through their nomination system, as not surprisingly these
contacts did the nominating for new recruits themselves. Two compelling reasons existed
57 Memo by Furse on Training Course, 4/1/1920. Ibid., 62, 66. 58 Furse minute to Milner on Unification of the Colonial Service, 6/18/1919. Ibid., 32.
56
to move the course away from the Imperial Institute. First, copying this formula would
allow the colonial civil services to tap into a supply of young men who went into
administrative work for its own sake instead of getting a number of older washouts who
had failed or were discarded in their other careers. This included, it would seem, the
retrenched army officers that the services relied upon in the immediate post-war years to
fill vacancies. Second, the training program itself would act as an advertisement and lead
other proper types to apply.59 Hence, Oxford and Cambridge were ideal for recruiting
suitable administrators to fill the ranks of a soon-to-be reformed colonial civil service.
Amery supported Furse’s plans to reshape the administrative keys to the Empire
because of the ramifications for imperial development. With pliable administrators on the
ground, large-scale agricultural and extractive projects could better succeed – a forward
imperialist goal since the late 19th century. The interrelated concepts that Africa needed
development and that the selection and indoctrination of colonial administrative officers
would play a key role in the quality and quantity of that development would form the
ideological basis of administrative reforms initiated by Milner and Amery and
implemented by Furse during the interwar years. Administrative reforms to the colonial
services thus played an increasingly integral role in the forward imperialist plans for the
Empire. If those who led the British African territories were economically illiterate
colonial servants or were unable or unwilling to help with large-scale economic
development, then reform of the services was a prerequisite if grand plans for the Empire
were to come to fruition.
59 Ibid, Furse to Wood, 7/5/1921. Ibid., 32, 101.
57
Traditionalists resisted Furse’s plans to train and indoctrinate probationary
administrators at a new course at Oxbridge. J.E.W. Flood, a Colonial Office mid-level
staffer for the West African desk and the authority on the Imperial Institute course,
actively fought Furse’s plans for the new course during the early 1920s. Because Flood
was responsible for the existing version, he wanted “a severely practical course
conducted by gentlemen…who had experience of the actual conditions of service and the
actual problems with which a newly appointed officer would be confronted.”60
Essentially Flood wanted the continuation of the course in its present state and cared little
for Furse’s plans, which he felt posed an unnecessary risk. There were both personal and
ideological differences between Furse and Flood during the 1920s and little love was lost
between the two. Furse never referenced Flood by name in his extensive memoirs about
his tenure in the Colonial Office, calling him only a “senior Dinosaur” with whom Furse
had periodic duels.61 Other staffers were wary of Furse’s growing power and did not want
Furse to be in charge of the course at all. Furse’s position, complained one, did not deal
with training and it was “in no way his work - which ends with the selection of the
candidate.” This staffer attempted to exclude Furse from official correspondence about
the new course.62
Staffers feared a loss of control. Flood’s main concern about coursework was that
the recruits could be “delivered to be the prey of wild enthusiasts” teaching subjects like
ethnology. Flood attached greater importance to the “personal equation” offered by the
lecturers – it mattered much more who the lecturers were, not just what information they
60 Memo by Flood about 5/1/1920 meeting. “CO 877/1/37811: Tropical African Services Course,” 7. 61 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 68. 62 Harding minute, 8/6/1926. “CO 877/3/31942: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 1925, 5, National Archives, Kew.
58
provided. 63 Officials in the Colonial Office would continue to fret about lecturers and
especially guest lecturers and their suitability. According to Flood, writing in 1920, two
of Furse’s university contacts “attach an altogether undue importance to ethnology, in
fact, they both are crazy Ethnologists of the kind whose ideas I particularly want to keep
off this course.” One of those contacts in fact had taught courses to naval officers during
the war. Sensing these courses were ending and so too his employment, he now resorted
“to beneficent schemes for the improvement of services of which he knows nothing, and
in parts of the world of which he knows less.”64 Therefore, Flood implied, Furse’s
university contacts had selfish motives for moving the course over to Oxbridge. Flood
again warned of the risks during Furse’s second attempt to move the course in 1925: “If
we transferred the course to Oxford or Cambridge we could not control the lecturers and
we could never be quite sure that our men were being taught as we should like.”65
Restating Flood’s concerns, another staffer pointed out in 1925 that one danger would be
that the courses could be run by “enthusiasts who might indulge in theories rather than
give instruction on practical points.”66 The aim and object of the course, Flood claimed,
“is not to produce doctors, judges, Auditors-general, botanists, or skilled surveyors but to
produce good administrative officers.” Thus, the Imperial Institute remained the best
option, Flood asserted.67
Furse’s opponents argued that moving the course could only increase costs, a
great annoyance to the colonial governments that would ultimately foot the bill. The
63 Memo by Flood about 5/1/1920 meeting. “CO 877/1/37811: Tropical African Services Course,” 7. 64 Flood memo, 7/31/1920. Ibid., 14. 65 Flood minute, 5/29/1925. “CO 877/3/18467: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation, Further Minutes,” 1925, 10, National Archives, Kew. 66 Lloyd minute, 4/24/1925. Ibid., 20. 67 Flood minute, 5/29/1925. Ibid., 10.
59
Imperial Institute course was very cheap. Conversely, a 1925 estimate to move the course
showed an increase of costs from £95 a head to at least £165. This would cause colonial
governments to become “restive.”68 J.A. Calder, a staffer for East Africa, pointed out that
several of the colonies were already inclined to doubt the need for any course in Britain,
so that any changes could be seen as a threat to their filling their vacancies.69 Flood
teamed up with Alex Fiddian, another staffer for West Africa, in berating Furse’s plan as
foolish. How, Fiddian asked rhetorically, could the Colonial Office keep Oxford and
Cambridge in line? If there was something wrong happening at the Imperial Institute,
staffers could just go there and rectify whatever was wrong. Oxbridge, he warned, was
jealous of the interference of governmental departments and overly concerned with the
freedom of their instructors. Moreover, the vague advantages in new recruitment that
Furse claimed were considerably outweighed by “the probable, or even the possible,
disadvantages.”70 Despite his dislike of Oxbridge, however, Fiddian hated the current
teachers at the Imperial Institute and hoped that they “will be ceasing before long to hold
these posts, at least I fervently hope so.”71 Thus, he remained neutral to moving the
course, although he had his reservations.
However, in part due to bureaucratic inertia and because they did not realize the
importance of it, Flood and Fiddian eventually allowed Furse take control of the course.
Flood even noted during Furse’s second attempt at moving the course in 1926, “the
whole idea is Major Furse’s and he is clearly the man to nurse this baby until it can fend
68 Flood minute, 5/29/1925. Ibid., 10, 13. 69 Calder minute, 3/9/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 11. 70 His emphasis. Fiddian minute, 4/26/1925. “CO 877/3/18467: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation, Further Minutes,” 2. 71 Fiddian minute, 11/8/1926. “CO 554/72/6: Tropical African Services Course: Colonial Accounts and Tropical Hygiene,” 1926, 12, National Archives, Kew.
60
for himself.”72 Furse placed himself on the committees at both universities that decided
what lectures would be given by the course in order to achieve the goal of controlling
course content.73 Furse ought to calm the fears of opponents of the move, for example by
and keeping the same titles of lectures even as he drastically overhauled their content.
Moving the course over to Oxford and Cambridge, to Furse, was initially about
advancing recruitment. In order to complete this task, he was quite willing to disavow
any desire for radical changes to the course content. He argued that the Oxbridge course
would roughly be based on the course at the Imperial Institute that had largely been the
same since its inception in 1907.74 However, his intent was far more radical than he let
on. From the start, the new course became less of a utilitarian training exercise and more
like an indoctrination program with its focus on economic development, which meant
that the content was very different.
Guest Lectures as a Site of Ideological Conflict
Once transferred over in 1926, the main question of the Oxbridge course became
who could have access to probationers. The old Imperial Institute course was too brief
and too technical, and therefore guests coming in to give informal or formal talks were
not an option. The Oxbridge course provided time and space – the probationers lived on
campus and they had a physical club in each university. Therefore, Furse and his Colonial
Office allies sought to gather like-minded officials from around the Empire to give talks
to probationers in order to promote their extractive and actively managed economic
72 Flood minute, 8/11/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 30. 73 Truslove to Registrar, 5/21/1930. “UR6/COL/4/1: Courses for Colonial Probationers, File 1: 1927-1944,” n.d., 112, Oxford University Archive. 74 The brainchild of that course was Mr. Popham Lobb, Lord Lugard’s personal assistant during his time in Nigeria. Flood minute, 5/29/1925. “CO 877/3/18467: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation, Further Minutes,” 8.
61
version of imperial rule. During this process, however, Furse sought to limit the access of
entrenched political rivals like Lugard and his protégés. This process had the added
benefit of pitting Colonial Office staffers against outsiders. Staffers who had adamantly
refused to agree to Furse’s reforms became more compliant and worked with Furse to vet
guest lecturers from around the Empire.
One Lugard ally had even provided the template for the new course at Oxbridge.
In March 1925, Sir Hesketh Bell, a protégé from Lugard’s early years in Nigeria who had
held various colonial posts over the previous three decades, most recently as Governor of
Mauritius, visited the École coloniale in Paris after learning about the training of French
administrators when he had visited French colonial Madagascar. He wrote a report for the
Colonial Office detailing the French system and his critiques and analysis of it. Bell
criticized various portions of the French system, like its foolish reliance on exams in an
attempt to eliminate patronage or nomination. He emphasized that the personal element
was rarely taken into account, so that “the son of a senator has no greater chance of
preferment than the son of a concierge.” Therefore, French administrators were mostly of
the petit bourgeoisie, a class never accustomed to possess authority and so one where the
instinctive habit of command was rarely found. The “natives of Africa or Asia,” Bell
surmised, “instinctively differentiate between the man who belongs to the ‘Chief’ class
and the one who owes his position and authority to his intellect or hard work.” Instead, the
superior British system (of which Bell was a product) provided “admirable specimens of
the best type of the educated youth of the United Kingdom.”75
75 Sir Hesketh Bell (lately a colonial governor) report on trip to Paris, 3/17/1925. “CO 877/3/18717: Visit to Ecole Coloniale Paris,” 1925, 8, 10, 18, National Archives, Kew.
62
Bell thought that the French system, however, also had great strengths. It excelled
both because of the subjects covered and, more importantly, because of the ideology of
rule imparted into newly minted administrators. Bell cited other administrators who had
taken the older Imperial Institute’s course. One hundred hours of lectures failed to inspire
British administrators or instill a certain idea of what Empire was and what it could be.
True, the French course was lengthy and very expensive. The whole course of study took
two to three years, but the subjects were much more engaging. French imperial policies,
including the general system of administration, agricultural development and how all
policies relate to administration and compare to other foreign systems, were the focal
points for training. Conversely, the Imperial Institute course “merely nibbles at the
subjects dealt with.” Although the British apprenticeship system provided better on-the-
ground training, the French system instilled its administrators with a broader idea of
Empire and the linkages between various branches. New French administrators had to
spend six months in the army as reserve officers and another six months in the colonial
corps before taking up their posts. Thus, Bell argued that a blended system would be best.
France found it advantageous to have a training college and it appeared that a similar
institution in Britain would be necessary for “our far greater and more rapidly expanding
African Empire.” The creation and organization of the proposed school would have few
difficulties and African colonies could easily defray the increased cost. They would
benefit immensely from the new school. This program of formal instruction, along with
the continuation of selection by nomination to assure the correct traits, would merge the
benefits of both British and French systems.76 These arguments about long term investing
76 Ibid., 10–21.
63
in the Empire and its administration were essentially the same that forward imperialists
were making, so Furse took to Bell’s report with glee and used it to craft the new course
at Oxbridge. In doing so, Furse also found a useful ally within Lugard’s inner circle to
utilize in promoting his plans to further centralize his own power during the interwar
years.
Once it was successfully transferred in 1926, forward imperialists quickly realized
that the new Oxbridge course could actively mold administrators into an imperial
apparatus. One important facet of this process would be to find allies within the present
colonial governments and cultivate relationships with them. Colonial Office staffers
would vet these reliable officers and allow them to give guest lectures and interact with
the new administrators. Furse and others in the Colonial Office sought control over who
could give lectures and what they would focus on as much as possible, most importantly
by limiting access to the probationers for imperial rivals like Lugard and his protégés.
This battle between two ideologies of rule played out in the complex politics of guest
lecturers. Who had access to the new administrators mattered greatly to the reformers,
and this question pitted Colonial Office staffers against outsiders thus smoothing earlier
rifts between staffers, leading to a more cohesive group of high-level bureaucrats.
During the initial planning for the course from 1925-27, officials from around the
Empire became interested in guest lectures. Most officials believed in the value of formal
lectures or even informal talks for probationers that would give an idea of the problems
and day-to-day experience of life in the field. One high-ranking officer from Northern
Nigeria declared himself pleased to help by giving a talk if needed, saying that he would
64
have very much appreciated “a little such advice when I first joined.”77 The universities
themselves lobbied Furse for current or recently retired officers to give talks on subjects
like the treatment of subject races or a general survey of problems connected with
administration. Probationers would gladly welcome many such talks weekly, university
officials noted, in either formally delivered speeches or informal meetings with current
administrators.78 Most Colonial Office staffers agreed and saw the guest lectures as an
“integral part of the scheme,” although their motives were not as benign as merely
presenting useful information about the day-to-day lives of administrative officers.79
Colonial Office worries about guest lectures reflected a larger contest between the
Colonial Office and some elites in the colonial governments over the information
probationers should receive during training. The sometimes cloaked but more often very
direct language used to describe what type of officers could give lectures reveals this
conflict. In 1925, before the course was launched, Furse saw the utility in having
“reliable officers” on leave giving “occasional” lectures.80 He was emphasizing with his
language the need for vetting who would be reliable and the casual nature of the
encounter itself. Clearly, with the changed nature of the course there was little yearning
by Furse and his allies for too much information from the colonial governments, as the
wrong people could derail or disrupt the indoctrination process. Not all were even thrilled
with the prospect of guest lectures. One staffer wholeheartedly disagreed on the basis that
77 HB Herman Hodge, Resident, Northern Nigeria to Gent, 11/1/1927. “CO 554/74/5: Tropical African Services Course, Oxford and Cambridge: Employment of Outside Lecturers,” 1926, 54, National Archives, Kew. 78 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 12/7/1926. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” n.d., 7–9, Cambridge University Archives. 79 Furse minute to Calder, 11/20/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 49. 80 Furse minute, 4/15/1925. “CO 877/3/18466: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 1925, 14, National Archives, Kew.
65
the Colonial Office would not have enough control over the guest lecturers’ topics, while
staffers themselves would have a hard time agreeing on suitable lecturers. Calder, also of
the East Africa desk, stated that he knew “of no one suitable” and thought “we should
discourage the idea.” Even the few suitable candidates he knew of would be too
expensive to provide with a fee, lodging and travel expenses. Even then, one of his
offhand suggestions for a suitable lecturer received a scornful “NO!” in the margins from
Fiddian, a staffer who had opposed the new course all along.81 The staffers eventually all
agreed it was “most important to pick [guest lecturers] carefully” and sent inquiries to
contacts whom they knew would be “good men.”82 Opponents like Calder consented to
the rest of the staffers’ plans. G.E.J. Gent of the East African desk pointed out in
December 1926 the value in co-opting useful colonial elites. He had a keen desire to get
various colonial governors and other high-ranking officials to give informal talks to
probationers while on leave. The key was to limit which colonial administrators they
would even inform about the option of giving talks to probationary administrators. Thus,
Gent suggested drawing up a list and writing only to “suitable” contacts.83 Furse agreed,
but they needed to be careful in the type of experience these guests had – likely a
euphemism for controlling the discussion of controversial issues like economic
development and “native rights.”84
By the second year of the course, the Colonial Office staffers had created a
method for selecting who could be a guest lecturer. The staffers met and drew up a list of
81 Calder minute, 11/12/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 48. 82 Furse minute to Calder, 11/20/1926. Ibid., 49. 83 Gent minute, 12/16/1926. “CO 554/74/5: Tropical African Services Course, Oxford and Cambridge: Employment of Outside Lecturers,” 4. 84 Furse minute, 12/23/1926. Ibid., 6.
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suitable officers, making sure to include representatives of both East and West African
colonies and protectorates, showing respect for the variety of experiences between
different parts of Africa. Their invitees were comprised solely of known elites: governors,
provincial commissioners (generally the second or third rung from the top), residents (an
elite political attaché), and heads of departments like Forestry or Native Affairs.85 This
focus on elites was due to necessity. During the first few years of the course, staffers
shunned lower level officials, those who the probationary administrators would be most
akin to in their first tours, likely because the Colonial Office had scant information on
these hires and so could not be sure who was the right kind of man. Furse then invited
vetted individuals to give a talk. Although the Oxford records are spotty, at Cambridge all
of the speakers in autumn 1927 were from Calder’s approved list.86 The Colonial Office
staffers attempted to have as much control over the encounter as possible. They even
tried to control the dates and times guests could speak to probationers, but this quickly
became a logistical quagmire. Although the system was nominally reformed in 1930,
when the probationers were allowed to invite guests themselves and the universities
handled the dates and times, little actually changed in the method of vetting. Staffers
purposely rearranged the system so probationers would feel that they had invited the
guests and so appreciate them more, but the Colonial Office still provided a list of pre-
approved lecturers and made sure probationers “understood that no guest should be
invited without the approval of the Colonial Office.”87
85 Calder minute, 1/21/1927. Ibid., 76. 86 Van Grutten to Furse, 12/5/1927. Ibid., 34. 87 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting,1/24/1930. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 41.
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Once staffers had solidified the system, the question became whom to invite and
whom to exclude. The treatment of Lugard is particularly revealing of how Colonial
Office staffers excluded unwanted lecturers. Even though he had retired from the
Colonial Service in 1919, he was quite active in the lecture circuit, and both universities
were obviously interested in having him speak to probationers. Oxford university
contacts suggested he be a full time lecturer, and those at Cambridge had mulled over
having him give a short lecture series on the history of Tropical Africa.88 Although
Lugard had an interest in the course from the start, he could not give lectures until its
second year, when he gave lectures on the system of administration in the Tropical
African Colonies.89 Probationers, one wrote, knew Lugard as the “father of Nigeria,” and
words of introduction were unnecessary “since anyone who had heard of a Crown
Colony, and Nigeria on a map, knew Lord Lugard by name and reputation.” However,
Lugard largely bored the probationers. Probationers attempted various endeavors, “direct
and indirect,” to get Lugard to talk about his personal reminiscences, but he refused to
reveal any. Only when his lecture was officially over did he talk about more interesting
subjects and only briefly, to the chagrin of probationers.90 After only a month, W.C.
Bottomley, formerly an East African staffer who had risen to be Assistant Undersecretary
of State under Amery, insisted on Lugard’s removal from the course.91 Bottomley
88 Colonial Service Probationers Committee meeting minutes, 7/23/1926. “CDEV 2/1: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1925-26,” n.d., 15, Cambridge University Archives. 89 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 12/7/1926. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 7–9. Wissman to Lugard, 10/5/1927. “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 192. 90 Lord Lugard, Club Meeting on 2/16/1928. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” n.d., 35, Cambridge University Archives. 91 “W.C. Bottomley Letters: Administrative/Biographical History,” accessed October 31, 2014, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/blcas/bottomley-wc.html.
68
complained that Lugard’s style of lecturing was “far from inspiring, and we doubt
whether his experience is quite of the sort to make him a suitable instructor to
probationers destined for service elsewhere than Nigeria.”92 Another Furse ally agreed,
although he sullenly informed the other staffers that they had already secured Lugard’s
services for another term. However, they could argue that the course was in an
experimental phase and drop Lugard from the curriculum the following year.93 This they
did.
Guest lecturers to probationers at Oxbridge often brought up Lugardian principles
and held his work up as an example in order to promote an economically exploitative
view of Empire. For example, one Colonial Office staffer allied to Furse spoke no less
than nine times over the interwar period, one minute touting the need for economic
development guided by knowledgeable administrators, the next confidently declaring that
Lugard’s “dual mandate” would help them understand the process of trusteeship.94 Part of
trusteeship was developing the country “for the benefit of the natives.” Lecturers utilized
coded language that criticized the earlier, quasi-paternalistic methods of rule that had
made overt economic exploitation harder. William Ormsby-Gore, the Undersecretary of
State for the Colonies under Amery (and later Colonial Secretary in his own right),
warned probationers that “one must not be ‘more Turkish than the Sultan’ - more African
than the African.” It was useless to struggle for the preservation of a native culture that
92 Bottomly minute, 9/22/1927. “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 1927, 19, National Archives, Kew. 93 Gent minute, 9/23/1927. Ibid., 21. 94 G.J.F. Tomlinson, late Secretary for Native Affairs, Nigeria, 10/14/1929. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 154.
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was of little or no value: “Africa was to be more than a picturesque anthropological
museum.”95
Staffers did not state their true objections to Lugard: that his lectures and
influence could undermine their larger project of forging a unified imperial apparatus that
rejected Lugard’s conception of “indirect rule.” Instead, they complained about his
considerable expense and stated simply that his lectures were unsuccessful. If Lugard
wished to speak to the administrators, he could, but staffers only offered travelling and
some lodging reimbursements and no fee for his services.96 Lugard seemingly shrugged
off this rebuff and ignored the course after this. He was busy with various international
and national commitments, most notably as a member of the Permanent Mandates
Commission for the League of Nations.97 Thus the Colonial Office staffers successfully
removed Lugard from the course, showing that they understood the best methods for
obstructing unwanted lecturers: complain about costs and ridicule their methods of
instruction. Thus, staffers avoided as much as possible senior administrators who could
compromise their goals.
Imperial Bedfellows
Although initially seen as a threat because of the anti-imperialist rhetoric of
socialism, the rise of the Labour party during the interwar years actually provided
forward imperialists with useful allies. Like the forward imperialists, Labour ideologues
in the Fabian tradition sought a more rational approach to Empire, albeit with the ultimate
95 Ormsby-Gore, Undersecretary of State for the Colonies lecture, 3/4/1928. Ibid., 48. 96 Gent minute, 7/18/1928. “CO 554/78/2: Tropical African Services Course,” n.d., 22, National Archives, Kew. 97 Lugard’s substantial personal archive collection at the Bodleian Library in Oxford has no information on his brief involvement with the course. “Frederick Dealtry Lugard: Administrative/Biographical History and Collection Level Description.,” accessed November 13, 2014, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/blcas/lugard-fd1.html.
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goal of “uplifting” colonial subjects exploited and corrupted by previously unscientific
and unprofessional colonial rule. Since the turn of the 20th century, Fabians and forward
imperialists had often found themselves on the same side of imperial arguments. Both
were supporters of the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) because both saw
the benefits of closer union between the Dominions and Britain to rationalize the Empire.
Like Milner and the forward imperialists, Fabians wished to introduce “the era of
organization” with a systematic policy for developing the Empire. They both, as E.H.H.
Green describes, “fetishized good management, efficiency” and the rejection of ad hoc
structures of governance that defined the British Empire, especially in tropical Africa.98
Labour thus became key allies of Furse’s efforts to introduce rational development and
scientific management of resources (including administrators themselves) to the Empire,
with the leading Fabian Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield) serving as Colonial Secretary in
the Labour government of 1929-31.99
Nonetheless, many other Labourites were strongly anti-imperialist, so forward
imperialist reformers feared that Labour would be obstructionist administrators. They
tended to lump Liberal and Labour together as leftist parties that were too “pro-native.”
Furse and his allies therefore sought to limit their influence as much as possible. Furse
felt that postwar youth were selfish and had a lack of discipline, but, especially in left-
wingers “like shop-stewards and the like” there was so much hatred and cruelty, he
would later recall.100 “It is horrible to think what mischief [a Labour Government] could
98 Green, The Crisis of Conservatism, 168. 99 Political scholars tend to focus on a single party’s approach towards imperial policy. For example, see: William Roger Louis, In the Name of God, Go!: Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill, 1st ed (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992); Partha Sarathi Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964 (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1975). 100 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 58.
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do under the present system of selection,” Furse wrote to Amery in his letter of February
1921.101 Under that system, Members of Parliament (M.P.s) and other powerful people
would petition the Colonial Secretary for appointments in the civil service for a
colleague, acquaintance, friend, donor, or family member. The Appointments Secretary
would then handle the request.102 As a result, a Labour Government, with control over the
Secretary of State and the Appointments Secretary, could conceivably be in position to
fill numerous administrative positions as it saw fit. This was exactly what Furse was
doing at the time. Labour M.P.s were already referring individuals who “would have been
a public danger in a Nigerian District,” Furse told Amery in 1921.103 Furse feared that
under the existing system the administrative apparatus would be filled by independently
minded, left-leaning people who might distrust economically exploitative plans. Furse
therefore did not accede to many of these Labour recommendations, warning about the
low acceptance rate in order to diffuse the suspicion of their M.P. backers.104 Furse and
Amery manipulated the system to fulfill political goals and therefore feared a new
government that might do the same. They needed to remove politicians from the process
altogether, by making the appointments secretary a civil service rather than a political
position, if they were to fully homogenize the service.
This concern about the reliability of Liberal and Labour candidates also applied to
the Dominions. In 1919, Amery contemplated a plan for a joint imperial, Australian and
New Zealand administration of British Pacific Island mandates, but he feared that the
101 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers.” The appointments department would get requests for posts from M.P.s often. 102 Before 1919, the position was the Assistant Private Secretary, Appointments. Grindle (of Milner’s Office) to Furse, 1/23/1919. Ibid., 17. 103 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers.” The appointments department would get requests for posts from M.P.s often. 104 Furse to Wood, 6/24/1921. Ibid., 99.
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administration would not be “sufficiently detached from local Australian and New
Zealand politics to be able to carry on a rational policy of development.”105 A plan to
recruit Canadians into the colonial services was difficult because Furse feared the
prospect of the Canadian Recommendation Board falling into the realm of Canadian
politics.106 “It is of course important that the recommendations of candidates,” wrote an
ally of Amery and Furse’s to the Governor General of Canada in 1921, “should be kept
absolutely clear from any connection with party politics in Canada.”107 In both Australia
and Canada, Labour and Liberal parties were gaining momentum in the immediate post-
war years just as Labour was in Britain. The threat of Liberal and Labour influence
therefore motivated Furse and Amery to take appointments out of the hands of elected
officials in the dominions as well as at home, for these appointments could derail forward
imperialist developmental goals for the Empire.
Furse’s fears about Labour appeared to be confirmed when Lord Passfield took
over for Amery as Colonial Secretary in June 1929. Furse later recalled, “We soon found
ourselves holding contrary opinions on most subjects.”108 Furse must have gained some
amount of Passfield’s respect and trust. When a Labour M.P. attacked Furse’s methods of
selection and training as elitist and exclusionary, Passfield gave Furse a copy of his reply
which warmly testified to the integrity of the system and its freedom from snobbery or
class prejudice. Passfield assured his Labour compatriot that he had looked into Furse’s
programs and Furse had selected administrators without “influence.” Passfield therefore
105 Amery to Milner, 2/12/1919. “AMEL 1/3/42: Lord Milner Papers: Correspondence. Letters and Minutes between LSA and Milner,” 52, 54, Churchill Archives Centre. 106 Memo by Furse about conversation with Falconer, 8/8/1921. “CO 877/1/6781: Selection of Canadian Candidates,” 1921, 8, National Archives, Kew. 107 Edward Wood to Lord Byng, 9/21/1921. “CO 877/1/37811: Tropical African Services Course,” 63. 108 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 234.
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had found nothing to criticize. For instance, he continued, “quite a proportion of the men
selected come from humble homes, and began in the Public Elementary Schools,” (his
emphasis) meaning they were from middle class or even lower class backgrounds. “I
thought I would let you know,” Passfield continued, “that I have been watching every one
of the 300 or so appointments made during the past three months, with the result stated
above.”109
Conclusion
The forward imperialists succeeded in limiting the power of rivals who believed
in the older laissez-faire traditionalist mode of Empire. This process was a purposeful
project, one that aimed to coopt the dominant discourse of British imperialism based on
“indirect rule” to fulfill their goal of viewing the Empire as an asset to be developed.
Furse and his allies were able to silence and sideline critics and then quickly moved to
solidify their positions with reforms to the administrative apparatus of the Empire. Furse
gained control over some of the hiring of administrators and then developed an
indoctrination program in the form of a new course at Oxbridge. In the process, he
sidelined the traditional role of M.P.s in the nomination process, assured that speakers to
the Oxbridge recruits embraced his view of Empire, and marginalized the advocates of
the laissez-faire traditionalist approach to imperial administration in the Colonial Office
itself. He then moved to formalize his own position and increase control over hiring,
training, placement and promotion throughout the entire Empire.
109 Passfield to Adamson, 10/3/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 87.
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CHAPTER THREE: RATIONALIZATION OF THE ADMINSTRATION
Inspired by Amery and Milner, Furse designed and supported reforms to the
British imperial apparatus during the interwar years. Outmaneuvering or sidestepping
their rivals in the Colonial Services and the Colonial Office, forward imperialists passed
various reforms to the hiring, training, tracking, and promotion of individual
administrators in the British Empire. In doing so, Furse and Amery slowly gained power
over recruitment and training processes. Once they had sidelined, co-opted or merely
silenced their opponents, they moved quickly to centralize power in their own hands.
They codified the tasks Furse performed, centralized all hiring and training of
administrators around the Empire, starting in Africa but eventually moving into south
east Asia and the western Pacific territories, and initiated the formal unification of the
Colonial Service. These various processes of centralization transformed the
administrative apparatus of the Empire during the interwar period and had radical
consequences for the homogenization of imperial discourses about the ideal Empire and
the proper administrative traits to make it come about.
While centralizing power in his own hands, Furse created and maintained an
increasingly comprehensive surveillance regime, attempting to track the movement and
progress of each employee of the Empire. With this information, he was able to insert
himself into discussions over promotions and transfers. This further enabled him to
reshape the Empire into a singular, cohesive unit. Furse and his allies quickly realized
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that they could use the Oxbridge course to build dossiers on each of their probationary
administrators, and that this would further centralize their own power. This new
surveillance state marked useful administrators for future success and, at the same time,
banished less useful administrators to outer posts – or, in a few isolated cases, revoked
their appointments. The course became an important tool to monitor, reward, and punish
administrators.
Furse took advantage of two correlating processes, the enactment in 1932 of the
proposals of the committee chaired by Warren Fisher to look at the administration of the
colonial service and the economic slowdown of the early 1930s. He used his new position
within that unified service to force senior administrators within the soon-to-be unified
Colonial Service to retire and make way for a fresh batch of, in theory, newly
indoctrinated administrators that he tracked from their training year onwards. Both junior
and senior administrators were somewhat aware of the changes occurring, but had little
recourse outside of writing critical memoranda that were filed away in London. Furse
thus partially succeeded in finalizing his silent revolution to reform the British Colonial
Administrative apparatus into a rationalized system.
Solidifying Power over the Imperial Services and the Colonial Office
One major hurdle Furse had to overcome was the power of colonies themselves to
hire their own candidates. The power of hiring for colonies and protectorates was an
important source of patronage, one that many would not give up easily. Additionally,
colonies often hired local white Europeans as administrators to lessen the hassle and
downtime of filling positions. Thus, Furse treaded lightly and made arguments based on
the lack of information that individual colonies might have about a potential candidate.
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Therefore, he claimed, the Colonial Office would be a better overseer of this process.
Milner’s Colonial Office placed obstacles for locally appointed administrators. In 1920,
the Colonial Office enacted a policy of allowing for local appointments only when they
were immediately needed and these appointments were temporary - terminable without
inconvenience. Internally, the Colonial Office saw this as an effective veto against the
selection of unsuitable candidates. Therefore, a local appointment unapproved by the
Colonial Office was reason for felling trees, filling out forms, and preparing memoranda.
For example, in 1924, Northern Rhodesia hired a local white settler for a police constable
position but neglected to send in the proper paperwork about the hire’s background.
Worse still, the constable achieved permanent employment status instead of a temporary
status that would allow for his possible removal. A scolding memo sent to Northern
Rhodesia and for good measure, Kenya and Tanganyika (likely because they too had
significant white settler populations), argued that local governments were at a loss when
it came to information on candidates. Officials in London could more easily gather useful
evidence about a candidate and, in many cases, could prevent the selection of a candidate
because of episodes in his past career that the local colonial government could not have
known about. This memo, edited by Furse, made these generalizations with no empirical
evidence. The true goal, however, was central oversight and control. Local applicants
were not being discouraged, the memo hedged, but colonial governments needed to
recruit the best possible candidates. In almost all cases the candidate pool was much
larger than that provided by local candidates alone.1 Some colonies even were against
local hires, including small Fiji, whose local hires tended to get stale and “provincial in
1 “CO 877/3/37175: Recommendation of Local Candidates by East African and North Rhodesian Governments,” 1924, 4, 9, National Archives, Kew.
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outlook.” The governor and senior officers there were convinced that local recruitment
failed and were anxious to recruit men of a “good stamp” from home with, naturally, the
help of Furse.2
The new Oxbridge course played a key role in diminishing the suitability of local
hires. Furse noted in a minute of December 1926 that it was important that local hires
take the course, as it would be “particularly valuable in such cases that they should be
subjected to the broadening influence of a course at a University, where they will rub
shoulders with other men.” Furse was particularly mindful of any “local rut” a candidate
might have needed to be shaken out of, noting a recent case of a Kenyan settler who had
controversial thoughts on native policy.3 He even proposed that the course should be a
requirement for promotion for any administrators hired before its establishment at
Oxbridge, but other staffers quickly ruled this out as logistically and economically
prohibitive.4 Although colonial governors had allies who also wished to keep the local
option open, the Colonial Office generally ignored them. Back in 1921, the University of
Cape Town implored Furse’s department to consider that a South African “brought up as
he is in a community where the native races are in the majority has acquired almost
unconsciously a method of dealing justly and humanely with them.”5 This went
unanswered, however, as South Africans (who were resident in colonies like Rhodesia or
2 Furse to Cowell, 10/19/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/5. Furse:1928-29: Fiji and Western Pacific.,” n.d., 46, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 3 Furse minute, 12/13/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 1926, 53, National Archives, Kew. 4 Minutes by Jeffries and Downie, 12/3/1926. “CO 533/680: Allowances to Officers Taking the Tropical African Services Course during Leave,” 1926, 4, National Archives, Kew. 5 Hill to Furse, 9/21/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 1921, 14, National Archives, Kew.
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Kenya) and other local hires threatened the control that Furse, Milner and Amery wished
to impose through the recruitment and hiring processes.
By transferring the course to Oxbridge, Furse increasingly solidified his position
over individual colonies. As the course eventually ran once a year (a two cycle course
was quickly abandoned after the first year due to logistical quandaries), colonies were
required to forecast their needs for new administrators about a year and a half out. For
example, to guarantee a hire that landed in a colony in August of 1930, a colonial
government needed to inform Furse of its need in March or April of 1929. The course
was based on the academic calendar and sought to recruit university educated men, so the
Colonial Office needed to interview during the spring and make offers for employment
during the summer to prevent potential candidates from taking employment elsewhere.
As a general rule, Furse warned in 1927, colonies needed to inform him of their needs for
the following year as soon as possible.6 He began to ask for estimates as early as
February by warning that without them, he could not guarantee any new probationers to a
colony for another two and a half years. Some traditionalists, like Governor Donald
Cameron of Tanganyika, sensed this loss of power. He opposed a once-yearly cycle of
hiring, especially because it limited the ability for colonies to fill positions as soon as
possible, a “highly important section of our activities.”7
Because Furse’s new regimen imposed such a long cycle, colonies and
protectorates were greatly distraught when a candidate fell out because his appointment
was revoked or he failed a medical fitness test, which happened with a Tanganyika hire in
6 Furse minute, 5/4/1927. “CO 267/618/8: Recruitment of Administrative Staff Who Will Have Taken Tropical African Services Course,” 1927, 50, National Archives, Kew. 7 Governor Cameron (Tanganyika) to Amery, 2/11/1928. “CO 554/77/2: Committee Report on Tropical African Services Course,” 1928, 68, National Archives, Kew.
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1927. Therefore, Furse proposed pooling hires, which further centralized his power.
Initially this was a question of logistics. Carrying a small surplus of probationers each
year, in case extra spaces opened up due to attrition in the course or unexpected deaths or
retirements in the colonies, was a good policy, Gent (a Furse sympathizer and Colonial
Office staffer) argued. Places would eventually open up, he continued, to provide for any
extra probationers.8 Larger colonies could offer to take one or two probationers above
their minimum needs in order to be sure to fill all positions. Toward this end, Furse
convinced the administratively larger territories of Kenya, Nigeria, the Gold Coast and
Tanganyika to take additional probationers if need be.9 This meant, however, that
colonies lost the ability easily to earmark individuals and thus had less motivation to try
to secure patronage positions. It would have been harder, for example, for Robert
Armitage, a probationer in 1927/28, to work under his Uncle Ned, the Governor of
Kenya, if he had been hired under this new pooling system.
Furse eventually won over critics in the colonies by making arguments about
efficiency and mutual benefit. He claimed that the natural tendency of individual colonial
governments was to look at recruitment mainly from the standpoint of their own colony.
This was the main reason for the Colonial Office Conference of 1927 – in order to
promote co-operation between the colonial governments and the Colonial Office with the
interchange of opinions and information. Furse bragged to the various colonial
governments about the concentration of recruitment into his hands and let them know of
the advantages: a single central authority could place candidates into positions they did
8 Gent minute, 8/26/1927. “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 1927, 16, National Archives, Kew. 9 Amery to Colonial Governors, 2/9/1928. “CO 554/77/2: Committee Report on Tropical African Services Course,” 73.
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not know existed, and could apply lessons gained from one colony or department to the
problems of others.10 He had gained a valuable ally in 1925 with the appointment of Sir
Samuel Wilson as Permanent Undersecretary under Amery. Wilson started a system of
“beachcombing.” Administrators from the colonies would work in the Colonial Office as
temporary workers, giving Furse and his allies another chance to make those already in
the colonial services even more sympathetic to Furse’s plans for the Empire. A select few
administrators worked closely under Furse’s tutelage in learning how London actually
could manage the Empire effectively. Furse later remarked that Wilson, “with the
blessing and support of Amery and Ormsby-Gore [Colonial Undersecretary under
Amery], was chiefly responsible for letting in the fresh air.” Wilson also pushed Colonial
Office staffers to travel to the Empire in order to promote mutual understanding between
the two bureaucracies.11
Thus, with the opponents from the colonies quelled and a system in place to gain
an increasing number of valuable allies in the colonies, Furse and Amery turned to the
other imperial services, especially the Sudanese and Eastern Cadetships, to annex them as
much as possible. Sudan had been the elite gem in the African services crown, in part
because of the well-known earlier exploits of Gordon and Kitchener.12 The universities
too ranked Sudan in the same league as the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.) and the Home
Service, with the Colonial Services far below in rank order (somewhere after
schoolmasters and business houses). Both Cambridge and Oxford’s representatives felt
10 Colonial Office Conference, 1927: Memorandum by Furse on Recruitment and Training of Colonial Civil Servants. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” n.d., 26, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 11 Ralph Dolignon Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 146. 12 First Memorandum Prepared by Furse for the Warren Fisher Committee, 4/27/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 16, 31.
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that the colonial services would become less and less popular because of the starkly lower
salaries (see table 1).13 Groups of colonies had set the salary range independently of one
another, thus accounting for the disparity.
E. Africa W. Africa Malaya I.C.S. Sudan
Year 1 400 450 420 540 480
Year 5 525 540 630 775-1080 660
Year 10 660 690 805 1200-1447 780
Year 11 690 720-792 924-1006 1290-1525 852
Table 1: Comparison of Annual Salaries in £, including travel and housing reimbursement costs, 1929.14
In 1929, the approximate difference between starting salaries in the Sudan and East
Africa was £400 versus £480, spreading to £690 to £852 in an average eleventh year of
employment.15 Thus, the Colonial Services lost candidates to all, even the Eastern
Cadetships. For example, in the 1929 cycle alone, Furse lost thirteen candidates because
of the better financial conditions, along with the presumed prestige of the competing
services.16 The universities had complained about salaries for years, warning about a
declining number of students interested in the colonial services, where a maximum
projected salary could easily bring financial hardship to administrators, especially when it 13 Morshead (of Cambridge Appointments Board) to Furse, 2/10/1926. “CO 877/3/15071: Recruiting for Kenya Colony,” 1925, 20, National Archives, Kew. 14 Comparative Tables of Conditions of Service for Cadets in the Administrative Service of Tropical Africa and in Malaya, and for Officers of the Indian Civil Service and of the Sudan Political Service, 11/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” n.d., 22–23, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 15 Comparative Tables of Conditions of Service for Cadets in the Administrative Service of Tropical Africa and in Malaya, and for Officers of the Indian Civil Service and of the Sudan Political Service, 11/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” n.d., 22=23, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 16 Memorandum by Furse on Analysis of Recruitment for Certain Branches of Colonial Services in 1929 and Previous Years. Ibid., 10.
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came to raising children and supporting themselves while on leave.17 The pay scales
seemed to “condemn a man to bachelorhood,” as did the lack of pay for wives being
transferred while on leave.18
Thus, staffers in the Colonial Office – even the oft-obstructionist Fiddian –
relished the chance to annex as much of Sudan’s prestige as possible. Sudan was a small
service comparatively and generally only needed two to four hires a year. Once the
Oxbridge course had completed a few seemingly successful years, the Sudanese
government approached the Colonial Office in 1928 to have their probationers enroll.
Additionally, because Sudan asked for an older (by one year) minimum starting age,
feeding its candidates into the course would allow Sudan to select men who were
valuable candidates but who had not reached their minimum age. The Colonial Office
agreed and two Sudanese candidates joined in 1928.19 These Sudanese candidates waxed
poetic about the importance of the course. Therefore, Sudan pushed seven of its new hires
into the following year’s course and had other potential candidates excited to take the
course in the future. At this point, however, Sudan miscalculated, first by asking the
universities directly and second by only giving two-week’s notice before the course
started.20 Even the universities, who were happy to have more students to bill, thought
this was too much too soon.21 Colonial Office staffers were enraged that Sudan went
around them. One, Bevir, wrote, “I do not see why we should run an organization for the
17 Morshead (of Cambridge Appointments Board) to Furse, 2/10/1926. “CO 877/3/15071: Recruiting for Kenya Colony,” 20, National Archives, Kew. 18 Roberts to Furse, 4/22/1925. Ibid., 27. 19 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 4/17/1928. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” n.d., 34, Cambridge University Archives. 20 Sudan Selection Board to Registrar, 10/12/1929. “UR6/COL/4/1: Courses for Colonial Probationers, File 1: 1927-1944,” n.d., 113, Oxford University Archive. 21 Van Grutten to Bevir, 9/20/1929. “CO 323/1049/11: Tropical African Service Course: Non-Colonial Service Students,” n.d., 68, National Archives, Kew.
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benefit of the Sudan Government.” However, in the unlikely event that Sudan ran its own
course, it might raise uncomfortable questions, like how much space the Colonial Service
probationers were taking up in the universities. Staffers thus thought it wise to try to take
their seven men. The important thing, however, Bevir wrote, “is to keep the Sudan
probationers under our control, as we shall then be in a better position for bargaining.”22
Bevir saw a chance to co-opt Sudan’s power and perhaps its prestige. He wrote to the
Sudanese government, “first the question of principle,” as the previous year was merely a
provisional arrangement, and second the logistical quandary of accommodation, as it was
hard enough to find space for the Colonial Service probationers at Oxbridge. Finally,
having so many Sudanese students also brought up the interests of the colonial
governments because the course was built for them, and they may have views on
extending it to so many others.23 Bevir and the other staffers were playing up their
outrage in order to force Sudan into their orbit.
Having recently replaced Amery as Colonial Secretary following Labour’s
emerging as the largest party in the 1929 general election, Lord Passfield sided with his
staffers but recognized that Sudan operated under the assumption that it was easy to
accept probationers into the course. He warned, “it will be necessary to make certain
conditions about their attendance” and demanded that Sudan only deal with the Colonial
Office going forward.24 The Sudanese government’s representative in London called on
Bevir’s office to “mop up the mess,” but he was out so Furse handled the discussion.
Furse berated the representative for the “most casual and discourteous [manner] in
22 Bevir minute, 8/15/1929. Ibid., 6, 11. 23 Bevir to Lush (of Sudan Government), 9/26/1929. Ibid., 65–66. 24 Fiddian to Van Grutten, 10/2/1929. Ibid., 62–63.
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treating us,” adding that it was intolerable that no official apology had come by letter.25
Sudan quickly caved and in order to prevent confusion requested that the Colonial Office
handle any communication about the course, including how much the course cost, how
much probationers got paid during their training year, and what information they would
learn. Sudan would merely send their candidates over and wait for them to complete the
course.26 Therefore, Sudan gave a large amount of power over their own probationers to
Furse due to their mistake.
Another competing service, the Eastern cadetships (Hong Kong, the Straits
Settlements of Singapore and Penang, Sarawak, Malaya, etc.) had a historical association
and bureaucratic links with India and thus fell outside the scope of the Colonial Office.
However, Furse and Amery sought to change this in order to further control the Empire’s
far flung parts. Among Furse’s enemies in London, however, was a staffer who
represented the Eastern Cadetships. Furse later recalled one of his periodic duels with a
“Senior Dinosaur…in a hostile mood…’I warn you that if you try to lay hands on the
Eastern Cadetships I shall come out on the war path.’” Furse’s reply: “I don’t want your
Eastern Cadetships now: I’m not ready for them. When I am, they’ll fall into my hand
like a ripe plum’ – as indeed they did.”27 Furse strengthened his position in 1927 after
“grave disclosures proving extensive smuggling of opium by preventive [i.e. customs and
police] officers themselves.”28 Because of the controversies and the logistical difficulties
25 Furse minute, 10/5/1929; Bevir minutes, 10/10 and 10/15/1929. Ibid., 14–16. 26 Bevir to Truslove and Van Grutten, 10/11/1929. Ibid., 54. 27 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 148. 28 Furse Note on Recruitment for Degenerated Malay States Customs and Straits Settlements Monopolies Services, circa 1930. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/11: Furse: 1928. Malaya, Including Singapore.,” n.d., Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. This is not a surprise, as the work of Anne Foster has shown the region to have been particularly ripe for smuggling networks. Anne L.
85
in acquiring candidates in general, in 1928 Malaya asked Furse to recruit for all of its
candidates henceforth. Having already been recruiting for its Education department,
Furse was initially apprehensive of the prospect. Malaya asked in part because Furse had
agreed the year before to recruit for the much smaller Fijian service, which had a few
good men but was rather “down-at-the-heels” and needed improving. Furse sent two
candidates to Fiji who made a good impression on officials there, and the people there
wanted to continue their relationship with Furse.29 However, he wished to first
consolidate his position concerning recruiting for Tropical Africa before expanding to the
other portions of the Empire, especially for the unpopular yet more lucrative Eastern
Cadetships.30 Amery disagreed and, having already made plans to dispatch Furse on a
worldwide trip to shore up their positions in various colonies, added south east Asian
territories to Furse’s itinerary. Amery desired that Furse become acquainted with local
conditions and obtain information that he might consider helpful in the future for his task
of recruiting candidates for the services.31 Once in Malaya, Furse heard complaints from
local officials about the lack of transfers between colonies so close to each other. Because
each was bureaucratically separate and run loosely by the India Office, which treated
them as administrative backwaters, a good candidate from, say, Singapore could not
readily transfer over to Sarawak across the strait or Malaya right next door. The ability to
move to various posts would be helpful.32
Foster, “Boundaries, Borders, and Imperial Control: Opium and the Imperial Project in Southeast Asia, 1890-1930,” Journal Of The Canadian Historical Association 20, no. 2 (2009). 29 Furse to Cowell, 10/19/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/5. Furse:1928-29: Fiji and Western Pacific.,” 46. 30 Furse to Ormsby Gore, 3/14/1928. “CO 877/6/4: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Hong Kong Cadetships.,” n.d., 2, National Archives, Kew. 31 Amery to Hugh Clifford, Malay States, 4/16/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/11: Furse: 1928. Malaya, Including Singapore.,” 6. 32 Notes on Talk with Head of Customs Dept at Kuala Lumpur, 12/11/1928. Ibid., 44.
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Malaya’s representatives overplayed their hand, however, by requiring Furse to
give any of his appointees a comprehensive exam in order to attain a post, a requirement
that they copied from the Indian Civil Service. Furse rejected their demand due to his
preference for a personal interview to find suitable candidates and thus did not recruit for
Malaya. However, representatives from the Eastern Cadetships still asked if their
probationers could join the Oxbridge course in order to gain a basic knowledge of
colonial affairs in general.33 Staffers in the Colonial Office were reluctant. They thought
that the Eastern Cadetships were too close administratively to India and had very
different problems compared to the African services due to their physical distance (unlike
the Sudanese probationers). Additionally, by 1929, the course had swelled to over one
hundred probationers and housing space at the universities became increasingly difficult.
Moreover, because the Colonial Office did not take a part in selecting candidates for the
Eastern Cadetships, staffers felt that “we should get the blame if [the probationer] was
unsatisfactory” on arrival to the colony. From the individual Tropical African colonies’
view, there was no gain from the inclusion of these probationers. Perhaps from a broader
view it might help relations between departments, but this was too far off for most
staffers to conceptualize.34 The Colonial Office staffers offered an olive branch to the
Eastern Cadetships, however, by tentatively allowing their new probationers spaces in the
course at a future date, likely thinking of their recent quarrel with Sudan.35
Because of India’s sheer size, pay scale and prestige, the Colonial Office staffers
had no misconceptions about the ability to manhandle the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.).
33 Bevir note on interview with Brooke (of Sarawak Office), 8/6/1929. “CO 323/1049/11: Tropical African Service Course: Non-Colonial Service Students,” 72. 34 Bevir minute, 8/9/1929. Ibid., 4. 35 Bevir to Brooke, 10/30/1929. Ibid., 41.
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Furse did not want the I.C.S. to handle any part of his probationers’ selection and training
because his feared its exam system could spread to the African colonies and dampen his
control. Staffers still wished to limit the I.C.S.’s influence. Staffers knew that the African
services were second-class. Various parties reminded them of the importance and prestige
of the I.C.S. and staffers were well aware of the massive pay and prestige discrepancy
between the services. The I.C.S. believed that their administrators represented “a specific
and clearly marked type of civilized humanity” which led them to become “an unrivalled
primary teacher of peoples.”36 Changes were occurring during the interwar period, most
importantly the hiring of South Asian Indians to populate the I.C.S. in anticipation of
Indian Home Rule. This process caused fear that the Colonial Services would quickly
follow suit and limit the future career prospects of newly hired white British men. Young
prospective applicants would be scared off, staffers feared, and thus not apply to the
African services.37 Therefore, the Colonial Office staffers moved to limit the I.C.S.’s
influence on their programs.
Because they were drawing from the same pool of prospective applicants,
however, the Colonial Office initially started in a subordinate position in relation to the
I.C.S. Therefore, staffers sought to pitch the African services as less formal and more
aristocratic in their operation. When moving the course to Oxbridge, Furse purposely
copied some aspects of Sudan’s and Egypt’s classes that were already being offered but
actively ignored how the I.C.S. prepared its probationers. Although the Indian Office had
run a training program for its probationers at a special college (Haileybury) and also
36 Extract from “The Third British Empire” by Prof. Alfred Zimmern. “University of Auckland Registrar’s Correspondence,” n.d., 34, University of Auckland. 37 Memoranda by Thos. A. Joynt, Appointments Secretary for University of Edinburgh to Furse, 5/8/1929. “CO 877/6/7: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Improvement of Recruitment at Scottish Universities.,” n.d., 29, National Archives, Kew.
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offered some law courses at Oxbridge for its probationers, the Colonial Office staffers
were only interested in learning what sanitation courses were offered and were openly
adverse to any other aspects of the I.C.S. system. The I.C.S., in contrast, sought to fully
professionalize its recruits and was happy to use the Colonial Office course if useful.38
Staffers were therefore distraught when they learned that an instructor allowed I.C.S.
probationers into a special Easter Vacation course on hygiene set up for the Colonial
Service probationers. In this instance, otherwise obstructionist staffers Flood and Fiddian
agreed with Gent, a Furse ally: “We should be consulted before any similar practice is
contemplated for the lectures.”39 They berated their university contacts that the I.C.S.
took advantage of the course “at the expense of the Tropical African Colonies” and
warned that any attempts by lecturers to craft the course at any point to be specifically
related to Indian conditions would make it a waste of time for the African probationers.40
This position of clear weakness, however, changed during the interwar period due
both to the diminished prospects of a career in an Indianized I.C.S. and to Furse’s reforms
to the Colonial Services. By 1929, although self-promoting, Gent declared that the
African services were already seen as a bigger affair than the I.C.S.41 In 1937, it came as
little surprise that the Oxford registrar asked the Colonial Services course committee to
weigh in on the discontinuation of a readership in Indian Law. This would have affected
only I.C.S. probationers. By that point, the Unified Colonial Service was the reference
point. The Colonial Office became so confident of its superiority as an imperial service
38 Gent to Hedley (of Indian Office), 10/21/1927. “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 1927, 122, National Archives, Kew. 39 Gent to Flood, Fiddian, Acheson, 10/31/1927. Ibid., 110. 40 Gent to Truslove & Van Grutten, 11/9/1927. Ibid., 109. 41 Gent minute, 3/28/1929. “CO 323/1047/2: Tropical African Services Course at Oxford and Cambridge: Examination of Syllabus; Minutes of Meetings,” n.d., 6, National Archives, Kew.
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that the Colonial Secretary even sent a proposal to absorb the now reduced in prestige
and numbers I.C.S. probationers into its course.42 Previously, the I.C.S. and Colonial
Office had nominally separate point people at each university, although in reality they
were the same individual people – Truslove at Oxford and Van Grutten at Cambridge.
During the anxieties over I.C.S. probationers taking their class in 1927, staffers were
horrified to learn that this was the case when Truslove replied on letterhead that said
“Secretary of the Indian Civil Service Delegacy.”43 Therefore, the 1937 reform actually
proposed the establishment of a Supervisor of Probationers for both the I.C.S. and the
Colonial Services, formalizing the same ad hoc system that had horrified staffers a
decade before.44
At the same time that Furse was sidelining or absorbing rival imperial services, he
navigated the complex politics of the Colonial Office to solidify the position of his allies
and marginalize his opponents. The Colonial Office featured rampant tribalism among
various groupings of colonies. The colonies and protectorates were administratively
grouped together during the late 19th century; e.g., there was an East African desk and a
West African desk. This arrangement encouraged animosity between the various desks,
even though the grouped territories (e.g., Tanganyika and Kenya) did not necessarily
have a cooperative relationship.45 These fissures increased dramatically with the
introduction of the Oxbridge course, which was increasingly expensive to maintain. The
staffers set up a system where each colony would pay a percentage of the cost of recruits.
42 C.A.S.C. Committee meeting, 3/11/1937. “UR6/COL/4/1: Courses for Colonial Probationers, File 1: 1927-1944,” 82. 43 Gent to Truslove, 11/14/1927. “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 106. 44 C.A.S.C. Committee meeting, 3/11/1937. “UR6/COL/4/1: Courses for Colonial Probationers, File 1: 1927-1944,” 82. 45 Charles Jeffries, The Colonial Empire and Its Civil Service (CUP Archive, 1938), 32–36.
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For example, if the Gold Coast had eight probationers in a course of one hundred, it
would pay 8% of the total costs. Similarly, in the case of a special course on languages
that cost ten pounds ten pence for each probationer, it was simple enough to pass costs
through.46 Nigeria needed around half of the total hires each year. Thus, when Furse
argued to pool hires, this meant that Nigeria would always have to pay for half of
everything, even though a probationer dropping out was often a possibility. Nigeria’s
Colonial Office representative argued that the colony concerned should pay its own costs
because spreading charges evenly meant that Nigeria would always be paying for half of
anything.47 Flood put it simply: “I will not agree to Nigeria & Gold Coast paying for
Uganda’s missteps.”48 However, Furse found allies amongst other staffers, with one
hoping that if pooling could “even in small degrees break down the walls between W.
African departments and E. African departments to work better, [I’m] all for it.”49
The traditional laissez-faire approach to administering Empire had entrenched
proponents inside the Colonial Office itself whom Furse needed to sideline in order for
his plans for centralization to come to fruition. Specifically, there was an entrenched
desire to keep costs low (always reinforced by pressures from the Treasury), and this
thwarted some of Furse’s ideas for the course. Furse constructed an argument that
increased costs would quickly lead to a better-equipped administrative apparatus. This of
course opened up rifts within the Colonial Office, as a number of staffers were not keen
on their representative colonies footing a larger bill and anxiously complained about any
extra costs associated with training. These worries ebbed, however, after Graeme 46 Flood memo, 2/28/1928. “CO 554/77/6: Tropical African Services Course: Allocation of Expenditure, Accounts, Equipment and Books,” n.d., 128, National Archives, Kew. 47 Gent memo, 10/27/1928. Ibid., 50. 48 Flood minute, 11/10/1928. Ibid., 17. 49 Parkinson minute, 11/13/1928. Ibid., 20.
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Thomson, who Amery had appointed as Governor of Nigeria in 1925, sent a communiqué
in 1927 confidently declaring that any extra cost “should be regarded as expenditure very
well justified.”50 Although some Colonial Office staffers were still wont to complain
(especially when the course expanded from two to three terms in 1928), Furse and his
allies rebuffed them with an accounting trick that obscured the actual cost of the course.
Either to better position themselves and hide a wide array of new costs or because
they frankly did not know any better, Furse and his allies compiled costs on an ad hoc
basis. Furse neglected to accurately account for housing and university fees in a number
of early projections about the cost of moving the course. The estimates for housing costs
continued to climb, in part, because of Furse’s inability to account for probationers who
did not have university affiliation and thus needed their own housing unit.51 His estimates
neglected other fees involved with university life that staffers did not find out about until
the course commenced, forcing the Colonial Office to pay them in a one-off manner. This
infuriated staffers. One bitingly wrote that the increased costs were “just the old story of
[the] course estimates being inadequate.”52 Fiddian complained about the gradual
increase of cost projections over the first few years of planning, as it seemed “something
very like a redutio ad absurdum of this system of training” when the universities asked
for ridiculous fees, like one supporting the Amalgamation Games Club.53 Even after the
50 Governor Thompson (of Nigeria) to Amery, 12/21/1927. “CO 554/77/2: Committee Report on Tropical African Services Course,” 94. 51 Furse to Vice Chancellor of Oxford, 2/27/1926. “CO 554/70/4: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 1926, 34, National Archives, Kew. 52 Calder minute, 8/16/1927. “CO 323/986/6: Tropical African Services Courses: Acquisition of Premises for Use of Probationers at Oxford and Cambridge,” 1927, 10, National Archives, Kew. 53 Fiddian minute, 11/4/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 45.
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first year of the course Fiddian believed that the older London course was still a better
and, more importantly, cheaper option.54
Luckily for Furse, however, he was able to use an accounting trick and called
many of the university fees “allowances,” making it seem as if they were paid to the
probationers themselves as a sort of salary instead of reflecting that they were paid to the
universities as fees necessary for admittance. Thus when in 1928 Furse argued for
extending the course to a full year (three terms instead of two), he could claim that the
cost per head was only £163, slightly under his original budget of £165, and lengthening
the course from two to three terms would merely cost £2,500 total.55 The British Resident
at Zanzibar seems to have been one of the few officials paying attention to this trick, as
he did some quick math and realized that increasing the course would increase total
probationers’ salaries by at least £6,000 a year, based on an average of eighty
probationers.56 Furse hastily provided the estimates to push changes through. Thus,
staffers had to approve the extension within four days of the financial estimates in 1928.
The accounting trick worked in that it continued to obscure the total cost of the course. In
some estimates, the salaries of probationers were included, whereas in others Furse or
other staffers left this item out. Thus, wild swings in the stated cost obscured the actual
cost of the course. By 1930 many staffers saw much lower numbers than before - £37 per
probationer at Oxford and £52 at Cambridge, compared to the £163 reported two years
prior because Furse counted most of the costs as allowances instead of being paid to the
54 Fiddian minute, 6/10/1927. “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 5. 55 Flood minute, 5/29/1925. “CO 877/3/18467: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation, Further Minutes,” 1925, 10, National Archives, Kew. “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 147. 56 Hollis, British Resident, Zanzibar to Amery, 3/16/1928. “CO 554/77/2: Committee Report on Tropical African Services Course,” 65.
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universities (which they actually were).57 However, after the first two years, the course
had enough momentum that staffers largely ignored slight increases of costs. For
example, additional fees for holding formal tests in 1931 were simply paid, even though
they were higher than the fees that staffers bickered over three years prior.58
Furse sidelined his opponents and increased the power of his allies each chance he
got. During Amery’s tenure the latter was easier. For example, the promotion of Cecil
Bottomley (later Sir Cecil), an ally of Furse’s, from principle clerk for East Africa to
Assistant Colonial Undersecretary in 1927 proved helpful when it came to limiting
Lugard’s influence.59 Bottomley had worked in Furse’s appointments department for only
ten days, but the two became very friendly, with Furse later describing Bottomley as “a
charming person with a very soft voice, who surrounded himself with heaps of files in
hideous disorder and had a way of explaining things which took a lot of getting used
to.”60 Under Passfield, Furse worked to become a confidant of the Colonial Secretary and
at the same time called into question obstructionist or non-compliant staffers. He warned
Passfield “no one except [the Colonial Secretary and his undersecretaries] is dealing with
the whole Colonial Empire.” However, he told Passfield, many of these undersecretaries
were undesirable. Some, like Gringle (who Furse occasionally had run ins with), had not
57 With the discrepancy due to how Cambridge billed for their lecturers. Bevir memo, 10/24/1930. “CO 323/1112/6: Memo on Cost and Syllabus of TAS Courses,” 1930, 98, 101, National Archives, Kew. 58 Holding the final tests cost at least £195. Bevir memo, 2/28/1931. “CO 323/1132/10: Tropical African Services Courses,” n.d., 104, National Archives, Kew. 59 “W.C. Bottomley Letters: Administrative/Biographical History,” accessed October 31, 2014, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/blcas/bottomley-wc.html. 60 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 27.
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even visited the parts of the world under their purview in decades, and others (like Sir
John Shackburgh) never had at all.61
Thus, by the late 1920s, Furse had absorbed or quelled the other imperial services
and contained opponents within the Colonial Office. He had raised the status and profile
of the colonial services and increased the power of both the Colonial Office and himself,
even if the colonial services had an uphill battle, especially when it came to wages. Furse
also had gained powerful allies within the Colonial Office and no longer had to only rely
upon the goodwill and active political participation of forward imperialist politicians like
Milner and Amery to achieve his goals of centralization. Furse had laid out arguments for
cooperation between the disparate colonies and protectorates of the Empire, including
pooling hires for efficiency’s sake, and had utilized the course as cover for his
centralizing tendencies. All of these movements towards centralization were formalized
when Amery and Furse set into motion the process of the creation of a singular Colonial
Service by setting up a Parliamentary committee to look into the whole subject of
appointments.
Formalization
As Colonial Secretary, Amery set up this committee in April 1929, just before
leaving office, as a crucial step towards permanently reforming the Colonial Services.
Furse’s work towards centralizing power made Amery realize the importance of
“securing the best candidates we can and selecting them with the greatest care.” As a
result, he announced in a speech in May 1929, “I have recently appointed a Committee
under Sir Warren Fisher to study the whole problem…to make sure that the progress
61 Notes on Last Memo (to Lord Passfield), circa 1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 36.
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achieved shall become permanent.”62 Amery chose Fisher because of his pragmatic
experience instead of ideological leanings. Fisher had gained the respect of others in the
British bureaucracy due to his earlier reforming work of the Home Civil Service, which
had focused on rationalization and professionalization. If Furse could sell Fisher on his
proposed changes to the imperial services, then no one could really call into question the
reforms because of Fisher’s reputation.63 Fisher’s real power, however, resided in his
position as permanent secretary to the Treasury from 1919 to 1939.64 There was no more
powerful position in the civil service, and it was one that would assure Furse’s critics that
economy would be a foremost concern. The initial goal of the Fisher Committee was to
consider the existing system of appointment in the Colonial Office and the territories
under its purview and “make such recommendations as may be considered desirable.” In
practice, however, it went on to deal with the unification of the Colonial Services. Furse
was the first witness called by the Committee and quickly had to justify his own position
and methods.65 The Committee members wanted Furse to inform them of the conditions
in his department and the Colonial Office in general since 1919 in order to build a
“proposal for the future of the [Appointments] Department (if it is to have a future).”66
The Appointments Department had gone through a number of changes in the
decade before the Committee but was still vaguely and oddly positioned in relation to the
Colonial Office. In 1919, Milner had appointed Furse, who earlier had worked as one of
62 Extract from SOS Colonies Amery’s Speech at Corona Club Diner, 5/6/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 86. 63 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 240. 64 Andrew Roberts, The Colonial Moment in Africa : Essays on the Movement of Minds and Materials, 1900-1940 (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 46. 65 Note on Committee. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 1. 66 A.E. Newbolt, G. Irby, D.L. Tovey, and F.R.W. Jameson (of Appointments Dept) to Furse, 11/7/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 25.
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three staffers from 1910-1914, to take sole charge of the appointments work for the
Colonial Secretary. Although the Colonial Secretary, as the head of the Colonial Office
handled appointments, the appointment work that Furse did was separate from that of the
Colonial Office, although he worked closely with staffers there. Since he was a political
appointment, the Colonial Secretary could remove him at any moment. Initially, Furse
had two temporary assistants to help handle the workload. The first few years after World
War I were marked by a shortage of staff because of the increased demands by colonies
looking to backfill positions, especially for technical departments like Forestry. By 1923,
therefore, the scope of the work had rapidly increased. Furse was filling about 400
positions annually on average, and his staff increased with the help of an assistant on loan
from the Colonial Office.67 More work came in each time Milner or Amery helped Furse
annex the appointments for other imperial positions, like various Forestry and Education
Departments, and his staff was thus increased. However, the entire Appointments
Department was “on purely temporary footing without security of tenure or pension
rights.”68 Furse and his staff were paid terribly compared to equivalent positions in the
Colonial Office, as other staffers often made double the amount paid to the Appointments
workers.69 Even with these disadvantages, Furse had one inestimable advantage: “a free
hand.” Although he was handicapped by a shortage of staff, he could choose his own
employees and get rid of misfits. He later recalled that his power in the department was
67 Colonial Office Conference, 1927: Memorandum by Furse on Recruitment and Training of Colonial Civil Servants. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 26. 68 Note on Establishment (of Appointments Department). Ibid., 11–12. 69 Furse memo to Lord Passfield, 12/9/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 31.
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unquestioned, allowing the recruiting organization to “speak to its sources of supply with
one voice.”70
It was this evolving role in the imperial apparatus to date, especially the changes
he had introduced in the 1920s, that Furse had to explain and justify to the Warren Fisher
Committee. He explained that the Appointments Department dealt with the recruitment
for over thirty territories under separate administrators. These territories presented a wide
range of problems and varied considerably according to the conditions of life and service
for administrators on the ground in each colony. Certain blocks of colonies, Furse argued,
like Tropical Africa, could be dealt with on fairly uniform lines, “but in many cases the
problem set is to find the exactly right ‘peg’ to fit into a particularly shaped hole.”
Uniform methods or merely following precedent were not enough, as careful individual
treatment was essential to success.71 Furse especially gave “due weight to…the all
important qualification of personality.”72 How could one judge the ideal traits? Only by a
personal interview, he asserted, performed by Furse or one of his close associates.
Competitive examinations, the likes those the Indian Office and its related Eastern
Cadetships, could not measure “qualities of temperament, personality and character, as
well as physical attributes and habits.”73 Personality, tact, character, and means of address
were of great importance for colonial administrators, he claimed, and these were hard to
70 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 225. 71 First Memorandum Prepared by Furse for the Warren Fisher Committee, 4/27/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 15. 72 Revised Copy of Transcript of Evidence Given by Furse to Commission, 6/13/1929. Ibid., 24. 73 Extract from The Hansard with annotations by Furse, 6/24/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” n.d., 97, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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judge “unless the candidate in question has been personally interviewed by an officer of
experience in these matters.”74
The appointments system that Furse had introduced, he told the Committee,
worked in a straightforward manner. Furse and his staff received all the material on a
candidate for a position, such as references, and followed up with one or more personal
interviews in their office. Any technical position (like those in Medical, Forestry or
Veterinary Medicine) meant that an expert or expert board also interviewed a candidate.
Furse argued that a written examination like those used by the I.C.S. and the Eastern
Cadetships deterred valuable candidates from even applying.75 During interviews, Furse
said, he focused on the appropriate traits that he thought were useful in the field, like a
certain air and gentlemanliness. An important criterion would be outward appearance and
a certain joie de vivre easily ascertained at first sight. Furse told the Committee that when
selecting recruits it was important to choose men who could stand the moral, mental and
physical stresses which tropical life imposed on Europeans, “and who possess these
qualities of mind, character and personality which make for success in the leadership of
native – and in most cases primitive – races.”76 This had always been Furse’s view, as he
had warned in a 1925 report that recruiters needed to size up potential colonial
representatives based on gut instinct and “good presence, address and manners.”77
74 Furse to Hill, 7/19/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 11. 75 Revised Copy of Transcript of Evidence Given by Furse to Commission, 6/13/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 23. 76 First Memorandum Prepared by Furse for the Warren Fisher Committee, 4/27/1929. Ibid., 17. 77 Extract from a Report on the Colonial Agricultural Services by Committee under Lord Milner, 1925. “University of Auckland Registrar’s Correspondence,” 32.
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Furse placed the greatest emphasis on personality traits like leadership,
“undoubted sobriety,” tolerance and calm judgment.78 He had explicitly warned in a 1929
memorandum, “That a man who is ‘nervy’, or a man who does not appear to be
sufficiently ‘self-contained’ for the lonely life he may have to lead, will not be likely to
make a good officer.”79 To find out if a candidate had the right personality, it took “all
that the interviewer can give. Every sense and faculty must be awake and concentrated, as
in making love, on the business of apprehension. At the end of two or three interviews an
interviewer worth his salt should feel exhausted.” He later recalled that, “Like a tracker
you must not neglect the slightest clue.” In one example, a candidate ruined a great
interview when the telephone rang under Furse’s desk. “I glanced at [the candidate] and
thought he startled more than he need have.” In the candidate’s record, Furse saw that a
shell burst during World War I had buried him. Furse sent the candidate to a neurologist
“who advised that he might break down in the tropics” and thus Furse denied him an
appointment.80 He sent a worried letter to Passfield that the Committee might not realize
that the Appointments Department had not had a full chance of applying Furse’s methods
and principles effectively and would think that new principles and new methods would be
necessary in the future. Instead, Furse insisted that his methods were sound and only
needed “to be given free play.”81 Furse was justifying his position as gatekeeper for
imperial posts.
78 Extract from “The Third British Empire” by Prof. Alfred Zimmern. Ibid., 34. 79 Furse’s Memorandum of Information as to the Australian Organisation, Issued 1929 updated November 1931. “University of Melbourne. Victorian Committee on Colonial Appointments. Minutes, 1930-40, 1946-53,” n.d., 8, University of Melbourne. 80 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 230. 81 Furse memo to Lord Passfield, 12/9/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 27.
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The Committee members, split between rivals, like one Senior Dinosaur who tried
to thwart Furse whenever possible, and allies like Sir Hesketh Bell and Wilson, who
sought rationalization, initially had reservations about Furse’s de facto power and wished
for a separation of powers. In its initial draft report, the Committee acknowledged that the
Appointments Department’s work had been “admittedly satisfactory” but thought that it
should be “reinforced” by a small independent Board of Selection that would have the
power to “supervise the methods of selection.” Furse’s department could submit
shortlisted candidates to the Board and then the Board would have the ultimate authority
of selection.82 Furse quashed this proposal by emphasizing the sheer numbers involved. If
the proposed Board concerned itself with a short list of names for all appointments,
assuming three names per appointment, this meant some 1500-1800 names annually for
anywhere from 200 to 600 positions (see chart below). He rhetorically asked if the
“sufficiently eminent persons who would have to constitute the Board would be prepared
to spend enough time on this work.” Furse instead proposed creating a panel of experts in
whatever field they were filling, with Furse putting the panel together.83 The Committee
insisted on an outside panel, however, so Furse proposed that the Board could send
candidates to the Appointments Department instead of the other way around, which keeps
the “final responsibility to one man and preserves his direct relations with the Secretary
of State.” It would mean that Furse could not appoint a candidate without the prior
consultation of an external authority.84 The Committee agreed to Furse’s proposal and
created a Colonial Service Appointments Selection Board. Furse regretted “the clipping
82 Colonial Appointments Committee, Revised Draft of “Provisional Impressions,” 12/9/1929. Ibid., 59. 83 Colonial Appointments Committee, Thirtieth and Thirty-First Meetings, 12/11/1929. Ibid., 80–83. 84 Memorandum by Furse, 12/16/1929. Ibid., 89–90.
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of my wings,” but later noted that “our liberty of action was, in practice, little
curtailed.”85 The payoff, from his standpoint, was that the Committee’s final
recommendations brought all the branches of the Colonial Services under one
organization for the first time. Furse acted as Chairman of the Selection Board and gained
Civil Service status, meaning his job was secure.86 Although the Committee admitted that
this proposal would anger some in the Colonial Services, the role of the Board in all
reality involved “very little change in the existing organisations.”87
Chart 2. Total Submissions and Appointments by Appointments Branch of Colonial Office, 1913-1944. The Warren Fisher’s reforms had effect on the numbers from 1932 onwards. The Sudan Political Service remained separate until decolonization in 1956.88
The Fisher Committee and Furse disagreed on the structure a new Appointments
Branch of the new Personnel Division of the Colonial Office should take. The Committee
85 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 241. 86 Colonial Appointments Committee Meeting, 12/18/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 106. 87 Note by Sir Hesketh Bell (of Committee), circa 12/1929. Ibid., 107. 88 Withdrawals include medically invalided candidates as well as those who opted out after an offer was made. Data from: “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/7: Furse: ‘Statistics, Etc., for Appendices’ Including Details of Appointments for 1919-1944, Progress Reports for Post-1945 Appointments, Etc.,” n.d., 7, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House; A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “The Sudan Political Service: A Profile in the Sociology of Imperialism,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, no. 1 (January 1, 1982): 23, doi:10.2307/218447.
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
1913
1920
1922
1924
1926
1928
1930
1932
1934
1936
1938
1940
1942
1944
Total Submissions made to SOS Incuding Withdrawls, etc.
Appointments & Scholarships
Appointments
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wanted a separation of powers, whereas Furse wished to continue to have a free hand in
appointments. The Committee asked Furse if the current machinery of appointments
could operate in conjunction with “other personnel work such as promotions and
transfers.” Furse agreed that considerable advantage in close relations between
appointments and promotions could be effected, but he still argued against bringing the
appointments work completely into the Colonial Office organization, even though both
served under the Colonial Secretary.89 He argued instead that unless “the same men at
home are responsible for both” selections and subsequent promotions and transfer, any
new system would be difficult.90 The Committee initially proposed that a senior
representative of the Colonial Secretary should hold a position of power for a certain
period, “but in any case not more than 4 years,” in order to limit his power. This officer
needed to deal with various governments, department heads, and others and be well
informed about good candidates and the various posts open around the Empire.91
However, the reforms enacted meant that Furse gained control over recruitment and
training. Furse’s domination was assured when his close associate and ally, Charles
Jefferies, was chosen to head the promotions branch and Furse was chosen to head the
appointments branch.92 Thus, the Committee’s wish for a separation of powers was
thwarted and in fact increased Furse’s power significantly, as he now had a role in
promotions and transfers.
89 Colonial Appointments Committee, Thirtieth and Thirty-First Meetings, 12/11/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 83. 90 Memorandum by Furse, 12/16/1929. Ibid., 92. 91 Colonial Appointments Committee, Revised Draft of “Provisional Impressions,” 12/9/1929. Ibid., 61. 92 Cunliffe-Lister Circular to all Colonies and Protectorates About Unification of the Colonial Services, 3/5/1932. “CO 850/11/1: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. Unification of the Colonial Administrative Service. Eastern Posts.,” 1933, 122, National Archives, Kew; Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 240.
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The Committee made its final recommendations in 1930.93 The implementation of
these recommendations meant the unification of the Colonial Services and became, to
Furse and his supporters at least, the “Magna Carta of the Modern Colonial Service.”94
The process was complicated and took two years to complete, with Passfield’s successor
finalizing the singular Colonial Administrative Service in 1932. Sudan and the I.C.S.
were still run separately, but most other colonial services were amalgamated. George
Tomlinson, a Furse ally with a background in Nigeria, took over as an additional
Assistant Undersecretary under the Colonial Secretary in charge of a new Personnel
Division within the Colonial Office. This Division consisted of two branches:
Recruitment and Training was headed by Furse as the Director of Recruitment; and
Personnel, which dealt with promotions, was headed by another ally, Charles Jeffries.95
With this system in place, Furse’s position and his view of the Colonial Service finally
had been solidified.
Furse and others pitched these changes as nominal in order to quell opposition,
with a major memorandum sent out to the colonies claiming that “unification need be
regarded as no more than a nominal term, but the Warren Fisher Committee have pointed
out that even nominal unification will result in an enhance [sic] prestige of more than
merely sentimental value.” Unification would provide “a simple picture of a generally
attractive Service to be presented to a young man in search of a career.” Memos and
pamphlets would be streamlined to give prospective candidates and current
93 Sir Hesketh Bell (of Committee) to Furse, 2/17/1930. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 174. 94 Jeffries, The Colonial Empire and Its Civil Service, 9. 95 Cunliffe-Lister Circular to all Colonies and Protectorates About Unification of the Colonial Services, 3/5/1932. “CO 850/11/1: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. Unification of the Colonial Administrative Service. Eastern Posts.,” 122; Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 240.
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administrators a clear idea of certain definite conditions of service, no matter what colony
a person was posted to. The chief advantages would be a wider recognition of the
principle of inter-colonial employment of officers and, with Furse playing to the audience
of the officers in question, the increased prospect of a career in overseas public service
not limited to a particular colony or group of colonies. This “rational organization
[would] ensure to a man at the outset of his service a reasonable degree of forecasting”
his upward mobility. Merit, this memorandum claimed, would be the basis for
advancement in a unified Colonial Service. Efficiency bars with standardized
qualifications across the Empire would check a governor’s power – no longer would
unworthy politically convenient advancements occur. Although some officers worried
about compulsory transfers, the memorandum said, they should instead think positively;
officers could be eligible for promotion within the Service as a whole. Although
administrators needed local knowledge, in the higher posts like secretariat work in
colonial capitals, the “general science of administration” was a greater skill to have;
therefore, these higher grades needed to make full use of transfers with correlating
qualifications between colonies. Salaries were increased and leveled between colonies,
especially at the middle part of a career, but the scales were changed so that “all
promotions should be made by selection on the basis of merit [instead of seniority], and
that the choice of the best officer available for filling any particular vacancy should be
unrestricted.” All officers appointed from 1932 onwards had to accept the liability of
inter-colonial transfer at the discretion of the Colonial Secretary, and from then on a
uniform method of entry into the Colonial Service would be by selection instead of other
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methods like a comprehensive exam. Officers would thus form a corps with clearly
recognized rights and obligations, a formalized and rationalized corps de service.96
Outside of having some members representing them on the Warren Fisher
Committee, the colonies themselves had had little influence on any of this and had little
recourse once this memorandum went out in 1932. For example, the Malayan Federal
Council had a number of councilmembers who were distraught over the potential
ramifications of unification. One councilmember worried that “the welfare of the country
must suffer by an influx of administrators, unknown, unknowing strangers in a strange
country.” The success of British administration around the globe, he argued, was having
sympathy with and an understanding of the customs, prejudices, casts of thought of the
people of a country, which an administrator could only get by “coming young and staying
long.” Not only that, unification hindered the natural aspirations of colonized peoples for
self-rule, the (presumed) ultimate goal of British policy under the traditional laissez-faire
approach. “I believe that Asiatic and European alike will unite in opposition to this
scheme which is called ‘unification’ but which ought to be called ‘rationalisation run
mad’…It is quite clear what they are after.”97 Chinese representatives also objected,
recognizing that a system of selection from London imposed “an unfair handicap upon
the ambitious Chinese and other Asiatic races who wish to identify themselves with the
government of the country which they have adopted as their own.” 98 Local groups
pleaded for “locally-born Asiatic British subjects” in the Civil Service, for exclusion cast
96 The Colonial Administrative Service Scheme of Unification, 3/5/1932. “CO 850/11/1: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. Unification of the Colonial Administrative Service. Eastern Posts.,” 124–126, 134, 138. 97 Extract from the Proceedings of the [Malay] Legistlative Council, 4/2/1932: A.P. Robinson speech. Ibid., 109–10. 98 Extract from the Proceedings of the [Malay] Legistlative Council, 4/2/1932: Mr. Lim Cheng Ean speech. Ibid., 111.
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“an unmerited reflection on the entire body of Asiatic British subjects in this country, and
places them in a humiliating position which is intolerable to their awakened sense of civic
responsibility.”99
Mr. A.S. Bailey of Malaya berated the plan on administrative and moral grounds.
He noted that although the competitive system (which the Eastern Cadetships like Malaya
used) might have some drawbacks, it still produced the finest type of officer in the
Empire. More importantly, he asked, who is responsible for this appointment of these
candidates? The proposed Appointments Board needed to have officers of many services,
including the Malay Civil Service, in the interest of fairness. Moreover, “there runs, as it
were, a leit-motif or rather an obligato, which is not quite so insistent but more insidious,
which expresses ‘unification’ of the Civil Service.” Unification would introduce an
element that subverts the underlying factor of British imperial governance:
The peculiar genius of those responsible for governing, administering and advising these various units has been the possession of mental elasticity and human sympathy which has enabled them to identify themselves to an astonishing degree with the mental and human outlook of the peoples over whom…they govern...
Essentially, Bailey defended the traditional laissez-faire approach to Empire: a local on
the ground amateur imbued with sympathy for the colonial subjects under his purview.
He acknowledged the easier path to promotion that individual administrators might have
under a unified system, but it would place the colonies under total Colonial Office
control. This “spells lack of initiative, less self-reliance, diminution of sense of
responsibility and a general slackening of the moral fiber.” The dread word “unification”
implied the
99 Forwarded Copy to Cundiffe-Lister of Letter from Straits Chinese British Association to Governor of Straits Settlement, 7/14/1932. Ibid., 85.
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launching forth of a stereotyped young Civil Servant, readily interchangeable at any time with another unified officer for service…primed with hard and fast rules as to action to be taken in certain general conditions, not permitted to use his own judgment on each matter as it arises in his own territory.100
Indeed, Bailey clearly seems to have understood exactly what Amery and Furse’s goal
was – to centralize power in order to homogenize administrators as a means of quelling
opposition to their plans for Empire, and in doing so, to diminish the autonomous roles of
the individual colonies in governing themselves by subordinating them to the authority of
the Colonial Office.
The Malayan governor heeded his constituents’ warnings, but the Colonial Office
tied his hands. He merely sent a pleading letter to the Colonial Office, bowing to the
centralization of appointments but asking for the inclusion of one or more newly retired
Malayan Civil Service officer to the Appointments Board. He too was very worried about
the threat of inter-colonial transfers, both the stealing of good administrators from
Malaya and receiving the burden of other governments’ unwanted staff.101 Colonial
Office staffers placated the complainers by hinting at a “general review” in the future,
when they would deal with considerations “in due course.”102 This never happened.
Instead, the Colonial Office quickly absorbed the other imperial services (outside the
I.C.S. and the Sudan Political Service) and neglected the power of individual colonies
over appointments. In 1932 the Eastern Cadetships were “assimilated” into Furse’s
system of recruitment and selection, justified by the idea that “if policy dictates that there
shall be assimilation, it is the minority which should be assimilated to the majority and
100 Extract from the Proceedings of the [Malayan] Federal Council, 3/14/1932: Mr. A.S. Bailey. Ibid., 103–06. 101 Governor of Straits Settlements to Cunliffe-Lister, 6/16/1932. Ibid., 93–99. 102 Shipway minute, 10/2/1932. Ibid., 18.
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not vice versa.” The administrations of the Eastern Cadetships were only 25% of the size
of that of the African colonies and thus lost.103 Hong Kong quickly followed, as its
probationers were included in the Oxbridge course in 1933, with some adjustments to
languages.104 The next year Malayan probationers went to Oxbridge, again with some
concessions over languages and local history.105 By the mid-1930s, this process was so
complete that even the South African High Commission Territories willingly (and
surprisingly to Furse) asked to be assimilated into the unified Colonial Services in order
to have the same recruitment, training, and pay.106 Furse completed his coup and even
shocked himself as to how well this process went, bragging later that it was his initiative
alone that moved large structural reforms like the Unified Colonial Service, “which,
strictly speaking, was none of [my] business.”107
The Oxbridge Course as a Surveillance Space
Furse had an interest in tracking portions of his network from the start of his
reforms. He monitored sources of recruitment, both in Britain and around the world. By
the late 1920s, he later claimed, he had collected “a secret list of Oxford and Cambridge
tutors in order of the reliability of their reports on undergraduates: we knew pretty well
whose swans would turn out to be geese.”108 He was weary of other universities, like the
University of London, that did not have a tutorial systems in place, since university
professors and contacts there did not know much about the personal aspects of their
103 The Colonial Administrative Service Scheme of Unification, 3/5/1932. Ibid., 129. 104 Bevir to Roberts, 10/3/1932. “CO 850/4/2: Inclusion of Hong Kong Officers,” 1932, 43, National Archives, Kew. 105 C.A.S.C. Committee meeting, 1/12/1934. “UR6/COL/4/1: Courses for Colonial Probationers, File 1: 1927-1944,” 100. 106 Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, 249. 107 Ibid., 62. 108 Ibid., 223.
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graduates.109 When recruiting in the Dominions, Furse similarly had come to understand
his contacts that fed candidates into the colonial services. In Australia, for example, he
described one General as “a man who would be likely to do this work well and
conscientiously.” Another had served in Nigeria and now worked in the Department of
External Affairs (the bureaucratic euphemism for Australia’s colonial Empire in Papua
and New Guinea) and was therefore useful. A third he was less sure about, but he was
politically connected and the local universities there wanted him involved.110 It was
therefore part of his larger approach towards centralization that Furse sought to keep
track of those within his new apparatus.
Along with formalizing his position and grasp on the levers of power, Furse
created an increasingly complex surveillance regime that tried to track the movement and
personality of each white European employee of the Empire. Likely inspired again by Sir
Hesketh Bell’s report on French training methods from his trip to Paris in 1925, Furse
and his allies in the Colonial Office provided the probationers with a Club in each
university as a meeting place that could sponsor formal talks from guest lecturers and
where they could socialize with each other. The Colonial Office staffers were very
concerned with the space and the role of the Club in the course and with the information
given to probationary administrators. They implored their university contacts to closely
monitor the types of interactions probationers had in the Clubs. This information
eventually became a useful tool to promote vetted probationers to positions that fast-
tracked them to power within the imperial hierarchy. Staffers and their university
109 “CO 877/4/4: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. London University Appointments Board: Correspondence.,” n.d., 3, National Archives, Kew. 110 Furse memo. 7/31/1929. “CO 877/6/13: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Central Selection Committee for Australia.,” n.d., 93, National Archives, Kew.
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contacts rewarded probationary administrators who used the Club appropriately and were
enthusiastic about their imperial mission. Others who did not participate or made a fool
of themselves were banished to outlying posts in their colonies, where they were, as one
later put it, “forgotten.”111 In a few extreme cases, probationers lost their appointments
before going out into the field. The Clubs then became spaces where colonial personnel
would unwittingly encounter Furse’s tracking system.
Bell’s report likely provided a framework for the Club as an institution. Bell had
argued that what truly set the French training system apart was the whole “tone and
ornamentation” of the institution itself. The tone and ornamentation were “evidently
intended to inspire the students with enthusiasm for their future careers in the great
Empire which France is rapidly building up in Africa and the far-East.” The French
colonial academy’s building was in the “oriental” style with a large courtyard, walls of
classrooms decorated with attractive scenes of tropical life, and frequently the names and
deeds of famous French Governors.112 This imperial space framed the institution of
knowledge production and at the same time socialized its students in uncritically
accepting their glorious imperial mission. Bell was likely impressed at how students
would be inspired while working in the formidable space provided by the library,
glancing to the outside world via an Orientalized portal and all the while being looked
down upon by scenes of the French imperial mission in action (see picture 3). In this
space, the accumulation of imperial knowledge meant that students were active
participants in the imperial mission, allowed to explore the information acquired
111 “MSS Afr S 1744. Rennie Bere: A Spear for the Rhinoceros,” n.d., 8, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 112 Sir Hesketh Bell (lately a colonial governor) report on trip to Paris, 3/17/1925. “CO 877/3/18717: Visit to Ecole Coloniale Paris,” 1925, 10, National Archives, Kew.
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previously. At the same time, however, they subjected themselves to the imperial state
and mission that were constantly looking down upon them as they learnt and literally
framed their view of the outside world in the shape and form of the window. The
courtyard provided an informal meeting place for students where they would be
immersed in an imperial setting, all the while still physically located in Paris (picture 2).
The building projected power to outsiders through its massive brick construction, colorful
decorations and orientalized trappings (picture 1).
Picture 1:École Nationale D’administration, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris, France. May 19, 2012. L’Ancienne École Coloniale. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_May_2013_-_L%E2%80%99Ancienne_%C3%89cole_Coloniale_(6).jpg.
112
Picture 2: Touraine, Stéphane. École Nationale D’administration Paris Patio, September 2009. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ENA-Paris_patio.jpg.
Picture 3: Touraine, Stéphane. Library of the École Nationale D’administration, in Paris, France. September 2009. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ENA-Paris_biblioth%C3%A8que.jpg.
Furse and his stalwart ally Bottomley read Bell’s report and seemingly took note,
believing that their probationary administrators too could be inspired by imperial
structures. However, other staffers argued that the Club should merely be a meeting
place, library, etc. for probationary administrators. Their arguments were based on cost.
Gent asserted that the individual colonies were ultimately paying for the Club; therefore,
membership was initially limited to those already in the service. Any non-probationer
who wanted to join could only do so with the agreement of the Colonial Office itself.
Since the colonies were paying the bills of the Clubs, they would not be pleased if other
students were using their facilities. Undergraduates of the universities could, perhaps,
113
join in occasionally during guest lectures, but the general admission of anyone could
easily result in a diversion of the Club from its proper purpose – as a meeting place for
probationers.113 The staffers who worried about budgetary concerns warned probationary
administrators that undergraduates could not join the Club, but probationers might invite
the occasional guest for tea and selected meetings.114
In contrast to those in the Colonial Office who fretted about finances, Furse and
Bottomley argued that the Club would be best utilized as a central place for all imperial
hires, not just those in the administrative branch, and as a recruiting tool. Bottomley
declared that medical, forestry and other future imperial agents should all be given access
to the Club in order to create greater informal bonds among the various types of imperial
services.115 Furse agreed, claiming to his Cambridge contact that allowing other branches
access would “do much to promote the esprit-de-corps and improve the future relations
between those who will enter different branches of the Service.”116 Additionally,
undergraduates who were interested in imperial service should be welcomed into the
Clubs and to their events. Furse and Bottomley’s argument prevailed because of the
success of recruitment through the Clubs themselves. Many of Cambridge’s second
cohort of probationers had been frequent visitors to the Club at meetings the term prior
and became enthusiastic recruits. Cambridge contacts reported that the Club was
therefore doing very well and achieving its goals – as a place for socialization and
113 Gent minute, 12/1/1927. “CO 323/986/6: Tropical African Services Courses: Acquisition of Premises for Use of Probationers at Oxford and Cambridge,” 25. Calder and Jeffries agreed. 114 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 4/17/1928. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 25. 115 Bottomly minute, 9/22/1927. “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 19. 116 Furse likely inserted this phrase into the report. Ibid., 139.
114
recruitment.117 The third year of probationers even formally requested to extend the
number of guests allowed.118 Thus, the probationers themselves solidified Furse’s goal of
having the Clubs act as a recruitment space.
The probationary administrators had some influence and control over the Clubs.
There were no physical clubs in the first year, and the probationers yearned for a meeting
space in both universities. In at least one example, once at their stations, first-year
probationers had complained to their governors about the lack of a proper space for the
purpose of socialization.119 Bucking the wishes of some Colonial Office staffers, the
Cambridge probationers argued at their first meeting that any member of the Club should
be able to invite anyone interested in colonial service, particularly undergraduates, to any
meeting that the Club sponsored and especially to the guest lectures. Using the same
arguments as Furse, they argued that the aim of the club was “to promote esprit-de-corps
between those entering the different branches of the Service.”120 Probationers renewed
this request three years later, indicating that Colonial Office staffers kept denying them
the opportunity, even though some, like Furse, completely supported the proposal (and
likely influenced their wording, as he was at that meeting).121 Although the probationers
themselves through a committee de jure ran the Clubs, the Colonial Office’s contact in
each university was the treasurer (thus holding the purse strings), and any staffer from the
117 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 4/17/1928. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 33. 118 Cambridge Colonial Service Probationers Committee Minute, 10/25/1928. “CO 554/78/2: Tropical African Services Course,” n.d., 78, National Archives, Kew. 119 Governor Grigg (of Kenya) to Amery, 5/22/1928. “CO 554/77/2: Committee Report on Tropical African Services Course,” 46. 120 First Meeting of the Club, 10/20/1927. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” n.d., 3, Cambridge University Archives. 121 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting,1/24/1930. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 41.
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Colonial Office could join and influence the meetings whenever he wanted.122
Probationers were given token positions such as Honorary Librarian, in part due to their
limited time at the course but also in order to limit the influence they could have on how
the course and Club were run.123 Staffers kept the influence of probationers on the day-to-
day operation of the Club to a minimum, making sure to retain the positions of real
power.
In planning for the physical space of the Clubs, the Colonial Office delegated the
work to their university contacts. The imperial bedfellows who were utilized reflected the
political ties of the era. In Oxford, the Rhodes Trustees volunteered to offer space in the
soon-to-be-completed Rhodes House. The Colonial Secretary, Leopold Amery, knew
many of the Trustees because they held his mentor Alfred Milner in high regard. Milner
had been very active in the Trust until his death in 1925. The Trust was funded by the
wealth of Cecil Rhodes, a South African mine magnate, and is known for the Rhodes
Scholarships, which continue to provide financial and institutional support for young
minds from the Anglophone world to study in Oxford. Once it was completed in 1928,
Rhodes House became a center for the Rhodes Scholars to gather.124 Colonial Office
staffers were excited both because of the reduced cost of the Club that this would involve
– they would only have to pay to furnish and outfit the rooms – and because the space
could act as a focus for imperial stimulation. The Rhodes Trustees even paid for
12211/10/1927 Meeting. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 10. 123 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting,1/24/1930. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 41. 124 “History of the Rhodes Trust,” The Rhodes Scholarships, accessed November 19, 2014, http://www.rhodesscholarshiptrust.com/rhodes-trust/history.
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temporary housing next door while Rhodes House was finished.125 Rhodes House,
although not purpose-built like the French training institute, still provided a suitable
imperial space for probationers. The busts, insets and portraits of Rhodes and his allies
(like Milner), the great men of the Empire, likely decorated the rooms (as they do today –
see pictures 4 and 5). The wood built-ins for what became a library for the probationers
are still in use today (visible to the right in picture 5). The probationers’ Club consisted of
rooms that would become the library, lecture room and a common room.126
Picture 4: The Beit Room. Provided by the Communications Manager of the
Rhodes Trust, 11/24/2014
125 Ormsby-Gore minute, 7/22/1927. “CO 323/986/6: Tropical African Services Courses: Acquisition of Premises for Use of Probationers at Oxford and Cambridge,” 4. 126Ormsby-Gore to Vice Chancellor, Oxford, 7/19/1927. Ibid., 155.
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Picture 5: The Jameson Room. Provided by the Communications Manager of the
Rhodes Trust, 11/24/2014 Although Rhodes House had some political ties to the Conservative Party, the
links were indirect. Staffers like Gent and Flood did not fight this proposal, likely in part
because of the subsidized cost provided by the Rhodes Trustees, and Oxford Club opened
in 1928. In Cambridge, conversely, very few appropriate spaces were available. As a
result, “in spite of any objections on political grounds,” the contact had to book a room in
the University Conservative [Party] Association building.127 Staffers panicked, with
Fiddian declaring the proposed space “thoroughly indecent and I cannot imagine how it
can be seriously proposed to agree to it.” Gent and Flood agreed, and the Cambridge
probationers went without a space for their Club until the university contact found a
politically neutral space.128 In fact, in part because Cambridge lacked a sponsor like the
Rhodes Trust and because the real estate market there was more competitive, the
127 Van Grutten letter extract, 9/4/1927. Ibid., 13. 128 Gent, Flood and Fiddian minutes, 9/8/1927. Ibid., 14.
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Cambridge Club had to move various times over the next few years and was not able to
provide a stable imperial space for the probationers.129
Colonial Office staffers understood the importance of a Club space for logistical
purposes like meetings and lectures; however, the broader goal of inspiring their
probationary officers in their imperial mission did not come to fruition in Cambridge and
was only partially fulfilled in Oxford. The Clubs instead became convenient spaces for
the Colonial Office staffers to track the behavior and temperament of the probationers.
Staffers, especially Furse, realized that the Club could be utilized as a space to monitor
the behavior of each probationer, and this information could be used to create a
comprehensive dossier. The primary contact in each university compiled information
from instructors and their own experiences and sent brief individual reports to the
Colonial Office. Furse would add them to the files he was creating for each probationer,
as well as forward them to the governor of the probationer’s colony.130 This monitoring
of every single employee of the Empire was a completely new endeavor that
complemented the centralizing tendencies of all of Furse’s plans. Those probationers who
were wanting in some respect, especially in their personal behavior, were made aware
that staffers in the Colonial Office were in theory paying attention and would be tracking
their progress throughout the course and into their careers beyond.131 Staffers made their
surveillance regime explicit from 1930 onwards because of numerous failures of
probationers during that year’s course and the panic this created.
129 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting , 7/12/1929. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 36. 130 Calder to Downie and Gent, 4/29/1927. “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 16. 131 Bevir minute, 4/5/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” n.d., 6, National Archives, Kew.
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Reports from the university contacts were not the first information collected on
probationers. Furse already had archived medical reports and application information
(e.g. letters of recommendation and transcripts) for each administrator when he applied
for a post. Throughout this process, the cost-conscious staffers worried about keeping
expenses down, dampening Furse’s ability to acquire information. Medical reports
illustrate this tension between increasing information and controlling costs. Before taking
the course and accepting their appointment, potential administrators had to pass a medical
examination. Medical reports were simple and physicians merely needed to vouch for the
suitability of candidates to live in tropical climates. Some staffers wanted a more
comprehensive medical form, however, with a list of specific questions, or at least to
require the physicians to retain their notes and forward them to the Colonial Office on
request. Other staffers balked at this proposal, as a standardized form would only cause
confusion. Physicians had been good so far about stating any doubts in the reports that
they submitted about each candidate, and this was the most important information.132
Most staffers were fearful that a new process would call for an increase in staff and
billable hours to complete the paperwork.133 Furse was left out of the loop for this
discussion; Fiddian (a “senior Dinosaur” in Furse’s memoirs) likely excluded him
because of their frequent conflicts. Thus, even though some staffers were interested in
gathering complete medical information on each probationer, reservations about
increased costs prevailed. With fixed costs, staffers were much more inclined to gather as
much information as they could once the probationers were at the universities.
132 Extract from Minutes of Medical Council Meeting, 5/23/1929. “CO 323/1048/5: Medical Examinations,” n.d., 11, National Archives, Kew. 133 Fiddian minute, 5/1/1929, Gringle minute, 5/4/1929. Ibid., 5–7.
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Furse requested a statement on each probationer at the end of each term. This
statement commented on both his studies and, more importantly, his personal conduct
and activities. Initially, staffers only asked for brief reports, and the contacts provided
only commentary on their coursework: e.g. “Work showed a good memory for details but
a lack of understanding of meanings of terms. It was wanting in clearness,” or “Work
marked by brilliance alternating with dullness. Clear that what interested the man alone
was done well.”134 Furse, however, concluded that simple reports on coursework, or,
worse still, simply grading the probationers would not suffice.135 Initially, the contacts
dutifully (but annoyingly) added one-line comments on the probationers: e.g., “he is shy
and rather silent, so that he should (if possible) be put under a chief who is considerate
and helpful,” or merely, “Should be capable of becoming an efficient administrator.”136
Then, when staffers implemented exams, only those probationers who had failed needed
a brief explanatory report discussing each one’s application, interest in the subject, etc.
that could be attached to his dossier.137 Furse continued to pester the university contacts
during the first two years of the course, however, until finally they added a fuller
narrative about each probationer’s conduct outside his coursework, including at the Club.
The primary university contact was the treasurer of the Club and attended almost all
meetings and talks, thus giving him firsthand knowledge about each probationer. This
transitioned the Club from being solely a meeting place into a space for surveillance.
Probationers had to be regular users of the Club in order to receive complimentary
statements in their reports. Those who served on the Club Committee, held posts, or 134 Van Grutten to Furse, 1/27/1927. “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 256. 135 Furse to Van Grutten, 2/15/1927. Ibid., 246. 136 Van Grutten to Furse, 3/25/1927. Ibid., 222. 137 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 4/17/1928. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 24.
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otherwise passionately participated were given paragraph-long statements about their
positive qualities. Others only received written shrugs, like “a hearty man not often seen
in the Club since his marriage.” Worse still was not participating at all in the Club, which
meant that a probationer would not come under the notice of those in power and
university contacts. Because the latter were active participants and frequent visitors to the
Clubs, they would note his absenteeism, especially when missing guest lecturers.138
The reports were increasingly comprehensive for each probationer, and university
contacts used descriptive language to convey the suitability of each for working in an
imperial space. Furse eventually stopped annoying his university contacts, likely due to
his satisfaction with the reports.139 Most reports were positive and made points about the
suitability of each probationer, such as, “A tough chap who will do well.” University
contacts, having been warned by Furse numerous times, noted beneficial traits. The
reports often noted the level of gentlemanliness, especially when a probationer had a
questionable background. One suitable probationer was thus described as “A man who
would be a credit to any service he entered, a gentleman in every sense of the word.” In
contrast, another report described an Irish probationer as likely a reliable gentleman
“even when inclined to be what I feel sure he really is, a pretty wild Irishman.” Another
Irishman was “not above a rough house and a few drinks, but will retain his gentlemanly
instincts and help his weaker friends home.” One Colonial Office staffer, an Irishman
himself, was not amused and angrily scribbled directly on the report, “Cannot an
Irishman be a gentleman?” The reports noted the backgrounds of non-blue blooded
probationers. Questionable family backgrounds might make these probationers “lose 138 Oxford Tropical African Service Course, Reports on Probationers, Michaelmas Term 1929. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 160–168. 139 Furse minute, 8/17/1927. “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 10.
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caste” and embarrass themselves in the field. Thus, they would need close watching,
especially on their first few tours to Africa.140 Intelligence was a secondary trait, and
could even be a liability if probationers were deemed cunning or crafty. Those who were
incompetent were passible, along with those who looked the fool at times. Instead of
intelligence, the willingness to follow was the most beneficial trait. For example, one
probationer “might follow, but never far in the wrong direction,” while another unpopular
but pleasant one would “follow the lead carefully.”141 This commentary shows that those
watching probationers were very interested in pliable administrators who would
unquestionably enforce imperial rule and at the same time presented themselves as
gentlemen. They were not looking for potential future leaders, but instead, unquestioning
followers. Staffers and their university contacts fiercely reprimanded those who did not
conform, in part to cleanse the imperial apparatus of unwanted administrators but also as
a warning to others. Probationers learned quickly: obey or potentially be banished to an
outlying district for the rest of your career.
A heavy drinking problem was a particular source of concern for the university
contacts. The fear was that excessive drinking in particular would lead to losing caste or
acting the fool, and staffers punished probationers caught doing so. Furse had warned
university contacts before the course even started that they needed to maintain discipline
amongst the probationers.142 The Colonial Office staffers were extremely wary of sending
out heavy drinkers, or even having known heavy drinkers associated with the course. In
one case, staffers denied a position for a much-needed language instructor to a medically 140 Van Grutten to Bevir, Comments on Cambridge Probationers, 4/2/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 98–104. 141 Van Grutten to Bevir, Comments on Cambridge Probationers, 4/2/1930. Ibid. 142 Colonial Service Probationers Committee meeting minutes, 10/27/1925. “CDEV 2/1: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1925-26,” n.d., 11, Cambridge University Archives.
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invalided provincial commissioner (a mid-level supervisory position) with experience in
Sierra Leone. The potential instructor had “taken to drink” as a form of self-medication
for neurasthenia (an ill-defined medical condition blamed on “nerves”) and thus was an
unsuitable example of “godly living for Colonial probationers.”143 When reports of heavy
drinking by a probationera came in, staffers were quick to scold such behavior. At
Oxford, one probationer, A.D. Dawson, behaved very badly one evening, did a great deal
of damage to his college and “showed himself to be scandalously drunk in Hall.” Dawson
showed remorse, and, more importantly, a determination to keep “himself well under
control.”144 Staffers were divided, with Furse and Bevir wanting to give him a “severe
shaking up” to rectify his behavior.145 Conversely, Flood argued that the “criminal” had
been uproarious at a single supper. “To quote scripture,” he wrote, “Let him that is
without sin cast the first stone.” It would have been ridiculous to make “a mountain out
of such a very small molehill as that.”146 Flood did, however, notify Dawson’s governor
“unofficially” – albeit officially enough for the following notation to be housed in the
Colonial Office archive: Dawson had a tendency to drink too much and he needed to be
placed under a careful and sensible man during his first tour. The other staffers agreed to
this proposal and felt that if “well handled, he ought to be all right, and to do well.”147
Colonial Office staffers made examples of probationers that acted out of line
during their course year. In 1930, the Cambridge contact reported in the middle of the
term that the Club had a certain amount of trouble and that three men were largely
143 Flood memo, 6/2/1928. “CO 554/78/2: Tropical African Services Course,” 164. 144 K.N. Bell note on A.D. Dawson (Probationer), circa 1929. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 125. 145 Bevir minute, 4/29/1930. Ibid., 15. 146 Flood minute, 5/1/1930. Ibid., 18. 147 Flood to du Boulay, 8/18/1930. Ibid., 55.
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responsible for this. One, L.M. Boyd, had at first sight “no intelligence and a terribly
slow uptake.” He was not a leader but a follower and had “absorbed just the wrong side
of the freedom.” Although Boyd was using the Club mainly to play cards and drink late,
however, the Cambridge handler still (somehow) believed there was good in him.148 As
he was a follower, staffers forgave Boyd, who had corrected his behavior by the time the
course concluded, deferring to the imperial authorities and apologizing deeply for his past
misdeeds. Nonetheless, Flood implored the governor of Boyd’s colony, Uganda, to put
him under a firm officer to keep him in line.149 The governor there thanked Flood for his
letter, but as it had arrived after Boyd had, he had already taken “rather a fancy to him.”
“One great thing in his favour,” the colonial contact proudly responded, “is that [Boyd] is
a Scot,” and Scots usually made efficient and reliable public servants. Boyd’s direct
commanding officer was “a hard-headed New Zealander, who is perfectly capable of
seeing that [Boyd] keeps to the right path.”150 Unlike Boyd, another probationer, W.D.
Spence, was reported not because of any complaints about his general behavior or
because he was falling off in his work, but “because he is supposed to be one of the bad
set, and to be a nuisance in the Club.”151 Unlike Boyd, Spence was not simply a
“follower,” and thus was “not wholly reliable,” Flood warned his governor.152 He was not
the worst, however.
The purported leader of the rabble-rousers at the Club was T.M. Stewart, and he
received the worst punishment of the lot: losing his appointment. He showed a lack of
148 Van Grutten to Bevir, 4/11/1930. Ibid., 109. 149 Flood to Perryman, 8/6/1930. Ibid., 56. 150 Perryman to Flood, 9/15/1930. Ibid., 46. 151 Flood minute, 5/1/1930. Ibid., 17. 152 Flood to Thomson, 8/18/1930. Ibid., 52.
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self-discipline, and his habit of constant drinking had made him “flabby and unfit.”153
The staffers realized the case was somewhat similar to that of Dawson at Oxford, who
had caused the ruckus at his Hall. The important difference was that Dawson was an
isolated case, whereas Stewart was one “of a set who want a very sharp lesson.”154 Bevir,
Furse and the university contact all agreed that they needed to take severe action against
Stewart and the others, but that Stewart needed the worst of the punishment, as he was
the leader. Flood agreed, but focused on Stewart’s heavy drinking instead: if there was
one place on earth where drinkers should not go, he argued, it was West Africa,
particularly Nigeria, where a man “may be out on his own and the temptation to drink is
considerable.”155 Stewart’s case is almost unique in that he was only one of three known
probationers to lose their appointment due to behavioral issues while at the course during
the entire interwar period. As “ringleader” of the “Cambridge three” of 1930, Stewart
was thus as bad as another 1930 probationer who had a rampant absentee problem, as he
missed weeks of the course at a time.156 Staffers even overlooked the first time this
probationer felt the need to “absent himself without leave,” but they finally terminated
him when he did it twice more.157 The only other known occasion of termination due to
non-medical reasons came in 1933, when a probationer again had an absentee problem
but still was able to “bluff” his tutors. If it had gone unnoticed, he likely would “probably
have continued to do enough to avoid trouble without doing much at all…You know the
153 Van Grutten to Bevir, 4/11/1930. Ibid., 108. 154 Bevir minute, 4/29/1930. Ibid., 11. 155 Flood minute, 5/1/1930. Ibid., 19. 156 Bevir to Crown Agents, 5/10/1930. Ibid., 66. 157 Bevir minute, 4/30/1930. Ibid., 16.
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type.”158 Stewart’s case shows that of all the sins a probationer could have, including
heavy drinking, the worst traits were incorrect leadership qualities and absenteeism. Both
sins directly threatened a more centralized imperial power structure.
Marked for Success
After establishing the dossiers he kept on probationers during their recruitment
and training, Furse tried to expand this regime to his men in the field. Furse started to ask
colonial governors as early as 1927 to report on the general efficiency of new
administrators and on the value of the various kinds of training given, albeit in an ad hoc
manner.159 Furse generally found allies within the imperial apparatus who also wanted a
more economically managed approach to Empire, and he leveraged these allies to his
advantage when creating his dossier system. A Nigerian official wished to have a
completely new “strain” of administrators who should be tracked during their first few
postings: “they will have broken well into their jobs in two tours, and then begin to show
what they’re worth.”160
At the time of the Warren Fisher Committee, Furse had already acquired five
clerks whose full time jobs were to track candidates through recruitment and training and
into their posts. One clerk kept “a list of names and other particulars noted” for those who
applied for an appointment. He also calculated the statistics of appointments and recorded
the volumes of correspondence between the Appointments Department and the
candidates and their references. This clerk filed records of quantifiable precedents, e.g.
158 Tomlinson to Cameron, 6/14/1933. “CO 850/3/22: T.A.S. Course. Continuation of Course in 1932,” n.d., 14, National Archives, Kew. 159 Colonial Office Conference, 1927: Memorandum by Furse on Recruitment and Training of Colonial Civil Servants. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 37. 160 Extract from a letter from the Comptroller of Customs Nigeria to Furse, 12/9/1926. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 193.
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the minimum requirements like height based on previous appointments. An additional
four clerks had the main job of filing all correspondence sent to the Colonial Office that
had to do with administrators. They prepared files and updated them with unofficial and
official reports that mentioned a probationer once Furse had started a file.161 Because he
was technically a Private Secretary to the Colonial Secretary before Warren Fisher, Furse
had access to all telegrams and memoranda sent to the Colonial Office, and he combed
every message – up to 1,200 a day – to build his database of the employees of the
Empire, starting with those he had files on already. He worried that the Warren Fisher
reforms would take this ability away and firmly wrote that this access to the telegrams
should continue. The new Appointments Secretary “should see all telegrams…he cannot
be too wide awake to what is going on in the Colonial Empire.”162 Furse was allowed
continued access and responded by attempting to expand his system. Once a unified
Colonial Service came about in 1932, Furse’s allies attempted to create a Colonial
Administrative Service List with biographical information on all officers, even non-
European ones, around the Empire. Initially, the List only sought simple biographical
details, like name, date of birth, honors, decorations and degrees, present appointment
and colony, past appointments and dates, and publications.163 It was therefore not as
complete as Furse’s system for his hires, but it was easily incorporated into his budding
surveillance regime.
161 Note on Establishment (of Appointments Department). “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 14. 162 Furse to Gent, 2/7/1930. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 155. 163 Cunliffe-Lister Circular to all Colonies and Protectorates About Unification of the Colonial Services, 3/5/1932. “CO 850/11/1: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. Unification of the Colonial Administrative Service. Eastern Posts.,” 147, 149.
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Furse used his dossiers as the bases for discussions over promotions. His ally,
Charles Jeffries, headed the Personnel Branch that was created in 1932. The Warren
Fisher Committee had wanted to encourage interchangeability between the Services and
between the Services and the Colonial Office at home, in order to have a more rational
and efficiently managed imperial apparatus.164 Therefore, members favored Furse’s
arguments about treating the Colonial Services as a single unit for promotion purposes
because the selection of candidates for vacant positions in any colony should draw on as
wide a pool as possible. The Committee also agreed with Furse that the exceptional
nature of transfers and promotions from one colony to another should change.
Administrators should believe that an officer would encounter no bar against
consideration for promotion in another colony.165
Conclusion
Furse, with the political support of Amery, began to reform the imperial apparatus
of the British Empire during the 1920s. This process utilized the language of
rationalization and professionalism in order to quell opposition to change, especially that
coming from the still-powerful laissez-faire traditionalists. By 1933, Furse had sidelined
opponents, annexed rival imperial services, and begun to forge a potentially powerful
centralized apparatus to control and manage the Empire. An important corollary to this
centralization process was Furse’s tracking regime. This allowed colonial office staffers
to increase their control over access to probationary administrators, information that the
probationers received, and the physical spaces that probationers occupied during their
164 Extract from SOS Colonies Amery’s Speech at Corona Club Diner, 5/6/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” 86. 165 Colonial Appointments Committee, Revised Draft of “Provisional Impressions,” 12/9/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 58.
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studies. The French training model directly inspired these efforts. University overseers
reported on probationers who did not conform to an acceptable standard, and this
information loop quickly consolidated the actual and, more importantly, the perceived
power of the Colonial Office. Dossiers compiled on new probationers would quickly
become one of the primary documents that determined the administrators’ career paths,
determining their suitability for promotions, transfers, or, in many cases, if they were to
be forgotten in outlying districts for the majority of their careers. This new approach to
tracking administrators rewarded pliable gentlemanly administrators with optimal initial
postings that led to careers fast-tracked to positions of power in the imperial apparatus.
This surveillance regime only continued to expand during the 1930s, thus increasing the
perceived power of the Colonial Office.
At the same his formal responsibilities were solidified, Furse also moved to
codify ideal traits for administrators in this new, idealized imperial apparatus. He
continued his earlier efforts to describe and homogenize the traits of his, in theory, newly
reformed and soon-to-be indoctrinated probationary administrators.
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CHAPTER FOUR: IDEAL TRAITS
Ralph Furse, since the start of his return to the Colonial Secretary’s office in
1919, had sought to categorize the optimal traits of colonial administrators in order to
homogenize the type of man recruited. Furse wanted a group of interchangeable
administrators, selected with the same physical and mental traits, trained in the same way
with the goal of having them make the same decisions and act similarly once in the field.
Due to his position, Furse personally hired 1,682 administrators throughout the Empire
from 1919-1939, and thus his definitions of a proper representative had global
implications. The “essential qualifications” for proper administrators, so a disseminated
report from the late 1920s read, included: insight, imagination of the constructive kind,
ability to understand and appreciate the social conditions of the colonized, tact, patience,
enthusiasm, a sense of humor, and, most importantly, “strength of character and the
power and determination to insist.”1 These traits were not just arbitrary, as Furse believed
they had real value. Furse believed that under centralized recruitment, the ideal
administrator would fill the lower echelons of the colonial civil services. For the forward
imperialists the background and qualifications of this ideal administrator were: he should
be a young man in his early 20s; racially, white British, including those in the Dominions
who were of British descent; unmarried; and should have attended Oxford or Cambridge,
where he would receive the proper training to have the right “personal factor” for a 1 Extract on undated report by Colonel J. Ainsworth, late Chief Native Commissioner, Kenya Colony “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/6: Furse: 1927-29: Australia and New Zealand,” n.d., 48, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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colonial administrator. However, the heterogeneous nature of recruitment before Furse
had consolidated his role meant that many administrators were local hires. Adventurers,
settlers, former soldiers or hunters were often hired as stopgap measures, or simply
because they were easy to recruit.2 These hires would often stay on and slowly move up
through the ranks, frustrating those who wished to have more centralized control – even
if that control meant from a colonial capital city like Nairobi or Lagos, if not London.3
Although some administrators had many of the preferred traits, the lack of control over
placements irked Furse and Amery. Therefore, control of hires was crucial, and the need
for such control helped frame their preferences for administrators that were picked to fill
the ranks by forward imperialists. Hence, if white British young men were optimal, that
qualification mattered to the forward imperialists because of the goal of centralized
control and power, in addition to the entrenched racism inherent in modern European
Empires.4
Scholars of the British Empire have tended to agree that administrators shared
common traits, but they have disagreed on what those traits actually were. Robert
Heussler argues that Furse emphasized character traits like the gentlemanliness
supposedly found in the upper echelons of British society, and that he distrusted middle
and working class recruits as a result.5 Anthony Kirk-Greene and his student Nile
Gardiner have noted that those administrators filling the lower rungs in colonies and
2 P. J Cain, British Imperialism, 1688-2000, 2nd ed (Harlow, England: Longman, 2002), 218. 3 In Kenya, hires from the various regimes – a Crown Company, the Foreign Office, and the Colonial Office – that governed filled the ranks of the colonial civil service from 1890 onwards. This frustrated one Governor who complained about the lamentable quality of several high administrators he had been saddled with. Cashmore, “Your Obedient Servant,” 34. 4 A number of works have explored the construction of imperial racism, with the most influential being Edward Said’s Orientalism. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 5 Robert Heussler, Yesterday’s Rulers; the Making of the British Colonial Service (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1963).
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protectorates around the globe generally shared similar traits, but disagree with
Heussler’s conviction that the Empire was filled with aristocrats. The middle classes, they
assert, were well established in colonial administration.6 Andrew Roberts argues that
Furse’s methods of selection paired nicely with the priorities of colonial administration
based on low cost and, as Furse claimed, the “preservation of tribal customs…[and]
proper care of native agriculture.” Because, as Roberts claims, “holding down Africa was
largely a matter of bluff,” it was logical to employ English schoolboy types who believed
themselves to be imbued with proper ruling traits.7 Furse did seek gentlemanly traits from
English schoolboy types, centralizing the preferences found in many colonial hierarchies
from the late Victorian era. His role was important in that it homogenized the
requirements for administrators throughout the Empire under his purview.
Furse set up recruitment apparatuses around the British Empire, including in
universities around Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, in his effort to find
proper British representatives. His ideal candidate had Victorian manliness traits instead
of the virile, masculine ones that were becoming prevalent in other English-speaking
countries, notably the United States.8 These ideal male traits, like gentility and
respectability, defined manly character as having control over physical and emotional
impulses, stressed the need for self-made men, and emphasized morality, Gail Bederman
6 A. H. M Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837-1997 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858-1966 (Houndmills [England]: Macmillan Press, 2000); Nile Taro Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire: The British Colonial Administrative Service, 1919-1954” (Ph.D., Yale University, 1998), http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.tulane.edu:2048/pqdtft/docview/304459431/abstract/140F7FB292A40810C1/1?accountid=14437. Kirk-Greene’s central argument in Imperial Administrators is that public school education created an ethos of rule that can be seen across the entire period of the 19th and 20th century Empire. 7 Andrew Roberts, ed., The Colonial Moment in Africa: Essays on the Movement of Minds and Materials, 1900-1940 (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 41. 8 Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
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argued in her seminal Manliness & Civilization.9 Furse and his allies preferred to project
these Victorian-era manly traits, instead of the physical bulk and well-defined muscles
associated with masculinity that were gaining traction in the Anglophone world after
1919. Age and health too played a part. Young age was preferred because of the lack of
imperial knowledge and malleability of young inexperienced men, whereas issues of
health revolved around contemporary assumptions about European suitability for the
tropics, in addition to health serving as a tool to restrict older, more experienced men.
Finally, Furse and others attempted to forge a racialized combination of whiteness with
Britishness due to the assumptions about the suitability and questions about the
trustworthiness of white groups who had originated elsewhere in Europe that arose during
World War I. These assumptions revealed the fractures and fissures of racial identities
around the British Empire during the interwar period.
Recruitment Around the Empire
Recruitment initially was the focus of Furse’s reforms for the colonial civil
service while he laid out his plans in the early 1920s; if he could fill the lower rungs of
the service, he believed he would eventually transform the entire apparatus. Improving
recruitment would “tend to prepare the way for the ideal of unification.” The older
Imperial Institute training course became a template of what not to do in this regard. The
Institute held the course in a London suburb, tucked away from society. This did not
promote the colonial civil services – only administrators who had already signed up to the
service knew of its existence. The new training course held at Oxbridge could help with
recruitment; it would act as an advertisement to the right kinds of young men, with more
9 Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917, Women in Culture and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 11, 15.
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information floating around the universities about colonial service, thus leading others to
apply.10 Moving the course would, in theory, allow the colonial civil services to tap into a
supply of young men who wanted to go into administrative work instead of getting a
number of older washouts who had failed or were discarded in their other careers. This
included the former army officers that the services relied upon in the immediate post-war
years to fill vacancies.11 Hence, Oxford and Cambridge were ideal for recruiting the ideal
administrator to fill the ranks of a soon-to-be reformed colonial civil service.
Furse problem in the early 1920s was that for the first few years after the War,
universities were not graduating enough people because of the number of young men
who had been drafted. Hence, the colonial services had no choice but to draw from
retrenched armed forces personnel (some of whom might have gone back to university
otherwise). Furse argued that moving the course to Oxbridge would return the colonial
services back to its pre-war roots; in the three years before the outbreak of World War I,
the Colonial Office appointed 73% of administrative recruits from universities – Oxford
and Cambridge accounting for 66% and others making up the remaining 7%. In contrast,
only 47% of post-war recruits had a university degree, and only 36% came from
Oxbridge.12 Furse believed that initial recruits in the new Oxbridge course that he
wanted, if well chosen, would form a nucleus of recruits that would promote an interest
in African administration and attract other undergraduates. These first recruits could give
informal lectures on the life and conditions of Africa. Recruits under training and
10 Furse minute to Milner on Unification of the Colonial Service, 6/18/1919. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” n.d., 32, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 11 Ibid, Furse to Wood, 7/5/1921. Ibid., 32, 101. 12 Furse minute, 4/15/1925. “CO 877/3/18466: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 1925, 10, National Archives, Kew.
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potential new hires would benefit from these talks. Potential recruits, therefore, would
know the service as a corps d’elite, nurturing their interest in imperial service.13 Apart
from the actual training of the men, the courses would encourage amongst other
undergraduates an interest in the colonial services and the problems that colonial
administrators had to deal with, thereby leading to an increase in the number of suitable
men who would come forward for appointments.14
Furse tried to move the course to Oxbridge under Milner’s watch in 1921, but due
to a wave of retrenchments in the regular and Indian army officer corps, he was forced to
hire those officers, so he failed.15 Later in the decade, he still made arguments about
solidifying sources of supply for the colonial services to justify his increasingly powerful
role in determining and codifying proper traits for recruits. He argued that he merely
wanted to focus on young men who wanted a good career instead of relying upon older
washouts who had failed elsewhere.16 Although staffers like the ever-obstructionist Flood
were disinclined to move the course to Oxbridge “merely for the sake of furnishing a
doubtful advertisement,” Furse had gained allies between 1920 and 1925.17 One staffer
agreed with Furse in May 1925 that the possible advantages in new recruitment policies
“considerably outweigh the probable, or even the possible, disadvantages,” as long as the
colonies agreed with the plan.18 This time Furse succeeded and in 1926 the new course
commenced. With the control that the course gave him over recruitment, Furse could then
13 Memo by Furse on Training Course, 4/1/1920. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 62, 66. 14 Furse to Vice Chancellor, Cambridge, 4/24/1920. “CO 877/1/37811: Tropical African Services Course,” n.d., 30, National Archives, Kew. 15 Furse minute, 2/18/1925. “CO 877/3/18466: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 3, National Archives, Kew. 16 Furse minute, 4/15/1925. Ibid., 10. 17 Flood minute, 5/29/1925. Ibid., 14. 18 Hardinge minute, 5/5/1925. Ibid., 3.
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go about formally codifying the specific traits these gentlemanly administrators needed to
have in order for his and Amery’s changes to the imperial apparatus to succeed.
Furse kept a watchful eye on the lecturers and university staff that ran the course
at Oxbridge. Furse had personal contact with professors, including K.N. Bell at Oxford
and H.A. Roberts at Cambridge. These two men became deeply involved in the course
and recruitment, with each acting as a point person at his university to keep an eye on
probationers and communicating directly with Furse.19 When other universities around
the British world wished to find placements for their graduates, Furse likewise sought
contacts who could vet proper recruits. He either tapped into previously established
employment and recruitment boards or set up new ones around the British Empire.
Following negotiations with London University, Furse described the head of their board
as a “polished, clean-shaven man…with a nice sensible manner” who should be helpful
in recruiting proper administrators.20 An Edinburgh University board member had served
in Egypt and therefore knew “the type of man required for working amongst native
races,” although most of the ideal Scottish candidates went to Oxbridge, so it was not
easy to find “good [leftover] Scottish material…very careful selection would be
needed.”21 Colonial Office staffers spurned offers from private staffing agencies, in large
part because there was “no denying that these people are…largely agencies for
19 CASC Committee Meeting, 2/5/1937. “UR6/COL/4/1: Courses for Colonial Probationers, File 1: 1927-1944,” n.d., 86, Oxford University Archive. Colonial Studies Committee Minutes, 1/22/1936. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” n.d., 80, Cambridge University Archives. 20 Furse minute, 2/10/1928. “CO 877/4/4: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. London University Appointments Board: Correspondence.,” n.d., 3, National Archives, Kew. 21 Furse note of talk with Prof. Shearer of Edinburgh University, 3/15/1927. “CO 877/6/7: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Improvement of Recruitment at Scottish Universities.,” n.d., 5, National Archives, Kew.
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discouraged and inferior men.”22 Another agreed: “I feel sure that the less we have to do
with these business agencies, the better.”23
Furse’s search for “proper” recruits included the Dominions (Canada in 1922,
New Zealand in 1928 and Australia in 1929), the territories of the Empire that were
dominated by former British settlers. Here too Furse worried greatly about the traits of
board members. Canada’s was the first recruiting board that he set up because Amery had
just visited and established an interest there in 1920. Furse hoped to fully acquaint the
board with the kind of qualifications that he was looking for, and he wanted to visit
Canada to oversee the first few sessions of the board, but the Treasury rebuffed his
request.24 Each Canadian university had a local board that vetted candidates and sent its
nominees to a Dominion-wide board, which in turn sent a final recommendation to Furse.
Amery was happy with the Canadian scheme: “Personally I look forward with great
confidence to the result of this modest little experiment in taking Canada into partnership
in ‘The White Man’s Burden.’”25 He tasked Furse with implementing and setting up the
foundation. Amery initially played a large part in implementing the scheme, heavily
editing Furse’s first letters about it.26 It pleased Amery that Furse went into the scheme
“with great zeal.”27 Furse believed that the scheme “will be in times to come a real
instrument for Imperial good.” Although only a “modest experiment,” he hoped that “we
22 Flood minute, 12/6/1928. “CO 877/6/1: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Use of Educational Agencies in Filling Vacancies.,” n.d., 2, National Archives, Kew. 23 Fiddian minute, 12/7/1928. Ibid., 3. 24 Furse to Hill, 7/19/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 1921, 11, National Archives, Kew. 25 Amery to Falconer, 3/2/1921. “CO 877/1/41876: Selection Board for Canadian Candidates,” 1921, 82, National Archives, Kew. 26 Furse memo on Canadian Scheme, undated c.1921. “CO 877/1/6781: Selection of Canadian Candidates,” 1921, 28, National Archives, Kew. 27 Amery to Falconer, 3/2/21 “CO 877/1/41876: Selection Board for Canadian Candidates,” 81.
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may achieve results which will benefit the Empire as a whole to a degree out” of
proportion to the number of men selected.28 The number of recruits was never to be a
large one – single digit numbers per year – but these men would tighten the bond between
Canada and the rest of the Empire in a “highly practical fashion.” Individual Canadians
could get an imperial experience and the Colonial Service could gain good people it
otherwise would not have. Furse argued that the inclusion of Canadians into the Colonial
Services should increase in Canada the knowledge and understanding of the problems
and achievements of the Empire amongst “native races, the burden of which has
heretofore been carried almost exclusively on the shoulders of Great Britain.”29 Should
the Canadian scheme be a success, it would be advisable to try to extend to Australia and
New Zealand, if not South Africa, although Furse described South Africa as having
“native” problems of her own.30 Hence, the Canadian Scheme would strengthen an
imperial bond amongst the white dominions and Britain. Although the Canadian scheme
slowly took shape during the early 1920s, once Milner (1921) and Amery (1922) left the
Colonial Office, the program limped along without sufficient sponsorship. Once returning
to office, Amery dispatched Furse in 1928 to set up identical recruitment apparatuses in
New Zealand and Australia.31 All of these boards were set up with officials of varying
28 Furse to Falconer, 7/21/1922. “CO 877/2/10693: Selection of Canadian University Students,” 1922, 10, National Archives, Kew. 29 Furse memo on Canadian Scheme, 3/2/1921. “CO 877/1/41876: Selection Board for Canadian Candidates,” 84. 30 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921 “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 81. The University of Cape Town even reached out once it heard of the scheme (presumably at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire at Oxford July 1921). Hill to Furse, 9/21/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 14. 31 Amery to Furse, 3/1/1927. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/1: Furse: 1927-28. Journey around the World to Attend the Third Empire Forestry Conference in Australia and NZ and to Visit Various Territories in Connection with Recruitment for the CO,” n.d., 4, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
139
imperial experience. For example, Australian officials touted their successes in Papua and
New Guinea as proof that Australians could properly represent the Empire.32
Furse did not find proper trustworthy recruiters in South Africa, spurning the
wishes of his political backer Amery, who had extensive South African experience and
wanted their university graduates involved.33 Colonial Office staffers discussed the status
of South Africans in measured and cloaked language, but firmly believed that South
African officials were not fit to understand the proper traits of a British imperial
representative. In this, they reasserted their decisions immediately after the War to
exclude “local” – a useful bureaucratic cloak for South African – candidates across the
African colonies under their purview. South Africans vetted in London itself were
passable, especially those of British heritage, but staffers consistently rebuffed Afrikaners
that they had not interviewed personally. The Colonial Office had banned Northern
Rhodesia, Kenya and Tanganyika from hiring locally since 1920, albeit in measured
language that hid the fact that staffers saw local candidates generally as “unsuitable.”34
Likewise, when setting up the Canadian recruitment scheme, Furse looked forward to
spreading the idea around to all the Dominions save South Africa, who had “problems”
of her own.35 In responding to Amery’s hopes for South Africa and then later South
African universities, Colonial Office staffers relied on bureaucratic hurdles and hid their
32 Australia had administered the neighboring territory of Papua since 1906. Britain had earlier declared a protectorate in 1884 and annexed the territory outright in 1888. 33 Amery to Furse, 9/24/1927. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/6: Furse: 1927-29: Australia and New Zealand,” 47. 34 J.H. Thomas memo to Kenya, N. Rhodesia and Tanganyika, 8/1/1924. “CO 877/3/37175: Recommendation of Local Candidates by East African and North Rhodesian Governments,” 1924, 9, National Archives, Kew. 35 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921 “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” n.d., 81, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. The University of Cape Town even reached out once it heard of the scheme (presumably at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire at Oxford July 1921). Hill to Furse, 9/21/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 14.
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contempt for local discretion.36 Staffers complained about momentary delays due to
Furse’s absence or his needing to work hard on upcoming Parliamentary committees.37
During all of these delays, the Colonial Office staffers hoped that South Africans would
read between the lines. Staffers searched for convenient excuses for exclusion; in 1928,
Fiddian complained that South Africans had been “more difficult” than Canadians when
they sought to set up similar machinery for recruiting medical appointments, for
example.38
Colonial Office officials working relevant desks warned each other about South
African overtures. It would be unfortunate, one staffer wrote another in 1928, to inform
South African officials about Furse’s progress in Australia or New Zealand. In the
unlikely event a recruitment system was set up in South Africa, he pondered, it would
look very different, hinting at South African officials’ untrustworthiness.39 Furse agreed
with his colleagues’ cautionary memos, concurring that South Africa was not Australia,
Canada or New Zealand. In the other three Dominions, Furse believed he was wise in
following similar lines of setting up the recruitment machinery. South Africa featured
“certain peculiar and rather difficult factors” that the Colonial Office needed to consider
36 How the Governor General, the monarchy’s representative in each respective Dominion, operated in South Africa made it difficult opposed to the other Dominions, staffers shrugged. Therefore, Furse and his allies in the Colonial Office argued that South African committees would not operate correctly and a new system would have to be worked out at a later, yet unspecified, date. “CO 877/4/1: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Candidates Resident in the Dominions.,” 1927, 1, National Archives, Kew. 37 Furse minute, 10/21/1929. “CO 877/5/14: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Proposed Scheme for Selection of South African Candidates,” 1927, 32, National Archives, Kew. Similarly, “inopportune” elections delayed any implementation of the scheme in 1929. Furse minute, 2/14/1929. Ibid., 27. 38 Fiddian minute, 7/13/1928. “CO 877/5/14: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Proposed Scheme for Selection of South African Candidates,” 24. 39 Newbolt memo, 7/9/1928. Ibid., 22.
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before recruiting locally.40 Furse and the other staffers were purposely vague in their
hesitations, lest local South Africans learn of their questionable position in the Empire.
South African representatives, unsurprisingly, asserted that they were proper authorities
to understand what constituted a British imperial representative. Furthermore, South
Africans would be the best colonial administrators in Africa due to their proximity,
history, and zeal for imperial positions, local officials argued. One South African
university official had confidently declared during earlier discussions in 1921 that a
South African “brought up as he is in a community where the native races are in the
majority has acquired almost unconsciously a method of dealing justly and humanely
with them.”41 South Africans thus had a unique understanding that could help the
Empire’s “native problems” due to the Dominion’s scientific knowledge, another official
pleaded in 1929. South African universities, he stressed, have had “an enormous amount
of material for the Clinical study of Tropical Diseases,” leading to well-trained medical
practitioners. With Empire-wide projects, scholars could expand their studies, using data
gathered by South African students around the Empire.42 However, the Colonial Office
continued to rebuff the South African officials with stalling tactics.
Yet, many South Africans were included in the colonial services, showing that
those with what were deemed to be British traits and habits could overcome the Colonial
Office’s hesitation concerning allowing local South African discretion. South African
officials had asked Amery for recruiting help starting in 1928, but sensing that he had no
allies amongst his staff, Amery quickly backed down. He apologized to university
40 Furse minute, 3/29/1929. Ibid., 29. 41 Hill to Furse, 9/21/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 14. 42 Raikes to Furse, 9/4/1929. “CO 877/5/14: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Proposed Scheme for Selection of South African Candidates,” 38.
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officials and hid behind Furse’s absence, but informed his contacts that any South
African could apply directly to London for positions.43 South Africans widely
disseminated Amery’s offer, as South Africans started to apply directly in London for
large numbers of positions thereafter. Of the 101 South Africans appointed during the
interwar years, at least forty-one had South African university credentials. The remainder
likely had a British university education from elite universities like Oxbridge.44 This
means that South African candidates, if of British background and of a certain class,
could properly represent the Empire. Of course, local South African representatives could
not make that distinction, according to the Colonial Office staffers, who believed that
they alone could properly ascertain appropriate British representatives in the South
African case. This treatment was in sharp contrast to the other three Dominions, all of
which had reams of memoranda sent discussing the importance of responsible officers
who could distinguish the proper British imperial traits. The Colonial Office neglected to
send South Africa these materials. South African officials were deemed unqualified,
unprepared to help select proper imperial representatives unlike their Canadian, New
Zealand, and Australian counterparts.
Personal Factor: Genlemanliness not Intelligence
Having set up the administrative apparatuses to find potential recruits, Furse then
articulated ideal administrative traits. Administrators would have to have an air of
43 Amery to Raikes, 5/4/1928. “CO 877/4/12: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Naturalised British Subjects,” 1927, 53, National Archives, Kew. 44 Gardiner’s data was compiled from both his HMOCS Data Project and Kirk-Greene’s Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service. Gardiner, “Sentinels of Empire,” 322, 327; “CO 877/16/21: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Statistics of Candidates Appointed by Secretary of State, 1913-1943,” 1943, 877, National Archives, Kew. Although technically some positions, like Police, could be filled by candidates without university credentials, this became less and less likely after 1919. Thus, it is safe to assume that almost all appointees were university graduates of some kind.
143
respectability about them. This would be the most important trait, and yet it was the
hardest to ascertain, according to memoranda issued by Furse. Respectability highlighted
a specific type of manliness that administrators should display. A recruit in any field – i.e.
including medical, police, or administration – needed to show “definite signs of
sympathy, self-reliance, an equable temper, adaptability, and decision.” Additionally,
administrative recruits had to show clear evidence of leadership.45 However phrased,
Furse and his allies around the Empire asserted that without leadership, respectability,
and a certain air about them, the colonized would not follow and obey new
administrators. Utilizing patronizing, Eurocentric racist language, Furse and others
believed that colonial subjects “have exceptional powers of intuitive observation. Like
children, they instinctively ‘size up’ the man they are dealing with; this they do very
quickly, and generally with accuracy.”46 Colonial subjects would ignore the best
technical advice if they discounted an officer’s personal influence, one Commissioner
warned.47 Put another way, a man “must be the kind of man who will command the
confidence and respect of the native.” The Empire to Furse was therefore a confidence
game, as the British ruled great areas “primarily by means of the personal influence
which the individual officer can exercise over the natives with whom he comes in
contact.”48 In 1925, Furse bemoaned the stereotypical postwar undergraduate as
unadventurous, maybe because of the “special home influences being exerted to keep the
45 Furse’s Memorandum of Information as to the Australian Organisation, Issued 1929 updated November 1931. “University of Melbourne. Victorian Committee on Colonial Appointments. Minutes, 1930-40, 1946-53,” n.d., 8, University of Melbourne. 46 Extract from a Report on the Colonial Agricultural Services by Committee under Lord Milner, 1925. “University of Auckland Registrar’s Correspondence,” n.d., 32, University of Auckland. 47 Quote from Colonel J. Ainsworth, former Chief Native Commissioner, Kenya Colony, taken from an undated report about Administration, first page on Pamphlet about Scheme “University of Queensland: Employment of Graduates – Colonial Appointments, 1917-1954,” n.d., 27, University of Queensland. 48 Furse’s Notes on the Recruitment Scheme, 9/4/1928. Ibid., 98.
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sons of families at home in view of the loss of other relatives, such as fathers or elder
brothers incurred during the war.”49 This lack of enterprise and adventurousness troubled
him, as the best kind of administrator needed certain personal qualities and educational
background, making it hard to find those with “qualities of leadership.”50
Furse found allies around the world who agreed, with one Head of the Survey
Department in Malaya stating, “Personality is of great importance, as the Surveyor is
often the pioneer in a new district.”51 “I have to hesitate,” the Police Commissioner of
Fiji wrote in 1928, “to use the term ‘gentleman’ in the requirements lest it be considered
snobbish, but that is really one of the most useful assets of a man who has to deal with
natives.”52 Departments in Kuala Lumpur preferred “the solid, cheery type who play
games. Nervous people are dangerous.”53 “ Gentlemen,” a speaker to probationers at
Cambridge likewise declared in 1929, “never forget to be gentlemen, tactful, gracious
and dignified in what ever community you come across.”54 Another declared that dress
was part of what displayed gentlemanliness, as “an officer should never go about in
shorts, for they give an impression of slackness, and besides few people have knees worth
showing!!”55
49 Furse minute, 4/15/1925. “CO 877/3/18466: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 16. 50 Colonial Office Conference, 1927: Memorandum by Furse on Recruitment and Training of Colonial Civil Servants. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/1. Furse: Papers for Warren Fisher Committee,” n.d., 28, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 51 Furse Diary, 12/8/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/11: Furse: 1928. Malaya, Including Singapore.,” n.d., 64, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 52 Inspector-General of Constabulary, Fiji to Furse, 6/30//1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/5. Furse:1928-29: Fiji and Western Pacific.,” n.d., 36, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 53 Notes on Talk with Head of Customs Dept at Kuala Lumpur, 12/11/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/11: Furse: 1928. Malaya, Including Singapore.,” 44. 54 Mr. C.W.G. Eden, Provincial Commissioner of Uganda, 1/17/1929. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” n.d., 115, Cambridge University Archives. 55 Major Ruxton, Lt Gov of Southern Nigeria, 2/7/1929. Ibid., 125.
145
Gentlemanly recruits that were acceptable were found most easily at Oxbridge,
and therefore these centers became increasingly important for gathering recruits.56 Furse
never wished to induce someone to apply, and instead wanted the “genuine volunteer,
who had solid grounds for his choice and character and discipline to follow wherever that
choice might lead.”57 Furse saw his nomination and interview system as the only way to
guarantee that ideal candidates were offered positions. Luckily, other colonial
bureaucracies utilized a nomination system and, unsurprisingly, were happy with their
results. Egypt and Sudan were both content with the focus on the “personal factor” when
they made selections, often pulled from Oxford or Cambridge.58 Some high-level
administrators in the Eastern Cadetships, which had used an exam system before Furse
gained control, agreed with Furse about the importance of appointees being gentlemen,
which these administrators identified with the English public school system. “More
technical knowledge,” one contact there wrote in 1929, “useful as it is, becomes of little
value if it is not accompanied by the instinct for administration such as is usually
associated with public school men.”59 Another “agreed that the most important thing was
to get boys of a good stamp, and normally public schoolboys.”60 Probationary
administrators themselves heard from Furse’s allies that “gentleman [sic] are wanted who
56 Furse to Amery, 2/19/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 80. 57 Ralph Dolignon Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 221. 58 Furse minute to Milner on Unification of the Colonial Service, 6/18/1919, Furse to Wood, 7/5/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 32, 101. 59 By public school men, the writer likely meant those that finished their university at Oxbridge. G.E. Grieg, Senior Warden of Mines, Federated Malay States to Furse, 12/21/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/11: Furse: 1928. Malaya, Including Singapore.,” 58. 60 Furse Diary, 12/3/1928. Ibid., 60. He was recalling a conversation with the Police Commissioner of Kuala Lumpur.
146
are able rather than clever and should not get absorbed in academic scholarship.”61 Furse
controlled the definition of an ideal administrator by the vaguely constructed “personal
factor.” Personality, tact, character, and address were of great importance for colonial
administrators, and these were hard to judge “unless the candidate in question has been
personally interviewed by an officer of experience in these matters.”62 In other words,
Furse or one of his close confidants had to vet each prospect.
Probationary and early career administrators bought into Furse’s traits; they had
made the cut, so therefore were naturally more amenable to accepting Furse’s ideals. One
confidently wrote to his parents in 1929 about the charming and well educated fellows,
“almost all of them extremely good looking. I should think that just about the cream of
Oxford is going into the Tropical African Service, as there are enormous opportunities in
it.”63 Not all agreed and instead tried to position themselves as better than their fellow
servicemen. For example, one wrote that “the entrance to the Colonial Service has got to
be made harder, some of these men [from both the Oxford and Cambridge courses] are a
disgrace.”64 They eyed each other as Furse and other higher ups were eyeing them, as one
probationer reported that his fellow low-level officer in his district was “very quiet, but a
good fellow to talk to, but I doubt if he will have enough push to succeed.”65
61 R.E.H. Baily of the Sudan Civil Service, 1/25/1934. “CDEV 1/2: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1931-1938,” n.d., 71, Cambridge University Archives. 62 Furse to Hill, 7/19/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 11. 63 Tripe to Parents, 2/5/1929, Balliol College, Oxford. “MSS Afr S 868/1/1. Tripe: 1928-29 Letters Written on Board Ship, at Oxford, London and Kasulu in Kisoma Province, Tanganyika.,” n.d., 35, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 64 Armitage to parents, 8/3/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” 9. 65 8/6/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/6/1: Armitage: 1929. Desk Diary,” n.d., 12, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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To Furse and his allies, intelligence was not only secondary, but often times
mattered little when sizing up administrators. Competitive examinations, required by the
likes of the India Office, could not measure “qualities of temperament, personality and
character, as well as physical attributes and habits.”66 Furse understood the personal
factor by negative and positive traits:
Brains by themselves are of little or no use unless the officer has character, tact and a good manner and address. Equanimity of temperament, a capacity for sympathy for those amongst whom he will be working, and a healthy and active body are of the greatest importance.67
Furse and staffers thus were willing to consider extremely unintelligent candidates,
especially for the less esteemed colonial police positions. One administrative recruit who
had failed out of Cambridge in between gaining his appointment and starting the
Oxbridge course had “very few brains,” according to Furse’s contact there, but he was
“big, strong and athletic, and he might make a good candidate for the Police.”68
Connections could help those who were “remarkably stupid,” such as a nephew of the
governor of Hong Kong, get a second look – without the governor’s recommendation,
staffers admitted, the candidate would have had no chance at all.69
The personal factor had so little depth – vague qualities like active body, good
manner, and address – that opposition to this policy seems to have been nil. One easy
criticism would have been to question Furse’s authority on the matter. Furse believed he
66 Extract from The Hansard with annotations by Furse, 6/24/1921. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/1/2. Furse: Early Memoranda by Furse and Related Papers,” 97. 67 Furse memo on Canadian Scheme, 3/2/1921. “CO 877/1/41876: Selection Board for Canadian Candidates,” 91. 68 Roberts of Cambridge Appointments Board to Private Secretary, Appointments, 5/2/1928. “CO 877/5/7: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Qualifications of Candidate from Cambridge University.,” n.d., 8, National Archives, Kew. 69 Jameson minute, 4/27/1929. “CO 877/6/2: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointments in Ceylon.,” n.d., 9, National Archives, Kew.
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possessed the ability to judge the “personal factor” appropriately, although his colonial
experience by 1922 amounted to visiting Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) once during his
university years. Eventually, Furse did not have to articulate as much what this personal
factor was, as he and his department became the only deciders of traits after the
implementation of the Warren Fisher Committee’s recommendations.
Age and Health
Furse recruited young men because of the future value of placing a 22 year old
versus a 30 year old. The younger the man, the more time he would have in the colonial
services, rising up the ranks and displacing older inferior (from Furse’s viewpoint)
administrators. Furse spurned ex-army officers because they were too old for junior posts
and not as easy to train as younger, inexperienced men were.70 Even officers with
colonial experience were shunned through the 1920s - for example, ex-officers of the
British Gendarmerie in Palestine, making their leaders “not very happy” with the rate of
employment of former officers and men.71 Colonial governors backed this policy as well,
as most governors were strongly in favor of young candidates - preferably men whose
age on arrival in Africa would be between 22 and 27. Junior positions had a lower salary
and therefore were cheaper for the colonies’ worrisome budgets. Additionally, Furse and
his allies believed that younger men were more deferential towards authority. These
appointees benefited from joining at an early age because they could rise up to high rank
70 The High Commissioner of New Zealand’s office wrote to the Colonial Office asking if there are any appointments in Fiji for retrenched officers. CO responded no, but they can try Fiji directly, although they are going through a contraction so that is also unlikely. High Commissioner of New Zealand’s Office to Colonial Office, 4/3/22. “CO 877/2/15262: Ex-Officers of New Zealand Staff Corps,” 1922, 10, National Archives, Kew. 71 McClawson minute, 8/4/1926. “CO 877/4/18: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Disbanded Officers of Palestine Gendarmerie.,” August 4, 1926, 2, National Archives, Kew.
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by the time they hit pensionable age.72 Most importantly for Furse, young men were
preferred because they fit into his larger scheme of transforming the colonial services, but
Furse generally hid behind citing the preferences of colonial governors when detailing
this policy.
Furse understood that young men would be more likely to be unmarried and
therefore able to move to numerous rural postings in their first few tours, giving Furse
more opportunities to control career paths and judge who should move up. Wives and
children were a burden to be avoided, and Furse warned that unless a married man went
“very carefully” or had private means during his early years of service, he should not take
up a junior appointment because of the low pay and hardship of various posts.73 One
advantage of recruiting at Oxbridge meant that probationers would likely enter as single
men and start their careers young.74 Recruits did not always comply with Furse’s
preferences, however. Robert Armitage, for example, demanded that he be able to marry
during his first tour in 1929, and his request went all the way from his immediate
commanding officer to the provincial level to the governor (who happened to be his
uncle), and finally to the Colonial Office. Staffers knew they had no basis for standing
against the marriage (i.e., marriage was not prohibited) and feared angering his governor
uncle, so they did not withhold permission. They did tell his commanding officer to
“interview” Armitage and “point out to him the disadvantages entailed and warn him that
Government cannot always undertake to consider the fact that he is married when the
72 Furse memo on Canadian Scheme, 3/2/1921. “CO 877/1/41876: Selection Board for Canadian Candidates,” 97. 73 Furse to Falconer, 4/24/1922. “CO 877/2/6370: Selection of Canadians,” 1921, 12, National Archives, Kew. 74 Furse minute, 4/15/1925. “CO 877/3/18466: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 10.
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occasion of his posting arises.”75 The Provincial Commissioner (two rungs up from
Armitage) agreed: “I have to ask [his commanding officer] to explain clearly…the
disadvantages entailed and the hardship which his wife may have to endure.”76 Armitage
did not heed their warnings, went through with the ceremony and his wife joined him
during his second tour.
Nor were wives always frowned upon after the first few postings. Once Furse had
time to vet and place probationers, ideal manliness shifted away from the bureaucratic
prerogatives of Furse’s wishes when they were recruited. He was more accepting of men
settling down once they had been in the system for two to three tours (or four to six
years). In fact, probationers learned that having a wife was a “most beneficial influence”
on day-to-day life, especially because she kept her husband’s mind off the available
European women scattered around the colonies.77 Some colonies disagreed, and sent
angry memorandums to their administrators, as the Gold Coast did in 1931. That
governor decreed that if a wife accompanied her husband on tour and interfered with the
proper performance of the officer’s duties, future applications for him to take her again
would be “seriously prejudiced.” The governor was in favor of wives going on tour,
“PROVIDED that the latter are prepared, and physically able, to share completely such
discomforts as are still associated with travelling in the Gold Coast.”78 Furse formalized a
policy of limiting wives during probationers’ first tours with the unification of the
75 Colonial Office to the Provincial Commissioner, Kisumu, 10/23/1929. “MSS Afr S 2204/4/2. Armitage: 1928-61. Miscellaneous Correspondence.,” n.d., 19, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 76 Provisional Commissioner, Nyanza to District Commissioner North Kavirondo, 11/2/1929. Ibid., 20. 77 Talk by Mr. D.S. Thomas, 11/10/1927. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 12. 78 Northcote, Colonial Secretary, Confidential Circular, 8/1/1931. “MSS Afr S 1709/1: Walker: 1930-35. Personal Letters, Reports Relating to His Administrative Service in the Gold Coast,” n.d., 45–46, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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services in 1932. Even Armitage got a shock when reading the memorandum, with the
suggestion that in the future administrators would not be allowed to bring their wives on
their first tour.79
Along with preferring youth due to the lower probability of junior officers having
wives, Furse preferred young candidate because of their lack of experience. They were
unaccustomed to the Empire and thus, in theory, would be more malleable. For example,
although large pools of ex-Indian Army officers and local hires were available (especially
immediately after the war), Furse dismissed these men from consideration because of
their relationship to a competing bureaucracy. These officers were not as malleable and
therefore would not be suitable for the homogenized service of his and Amery’s plans.
The fear of experience working in India reflected this. Ideally, first time officers should
have only the expectations they had been groomed to believe and not have experience in
another imperial service to compare their tasks with. The question of preferred age and
career status often came up in the early 1920s, due to the retrenchment policies of the
British and Indian Armies. Both forces were demobilizing rapidly, creating a glut of
unemployed ex-Army officers. Although Furse tolerated British Army officers, he
spurned Indian Army officers (also white British) as much as possible; he felt that their
Indian experience tainted them.80 Indian officers who had served only for a few years
might be suitable. Junior officers who had worked in Mesopotamia for less than four
79 “…it will stop any more recruiting [of older candidates like those] from the army if it is adopted.” Armitage to parents, 8/23/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” 12. 80 Furse minute, 9/13/1921. “CO 877/1/43041: Appointments for Redundant Indian Army Officers,” 1921, 4, National Archives, Kew.
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years had “not been long enough under the Government of India to spoil them.”81
External letters explaining this policy hid behind the claim of meritocracy. The colonial
services did not want senior officers for logistical reasons, as it would have been difficult
or even impossible to offer employment to retrenched army officers in senior positions
“without unduly prejudicing the claims to promotion of officers already in the colonial
services.”82 Furse put up logistical roadblocks for ex-Indian Army officers, like stressing
the importance of a personal interview in London and the small number of positions
open.83 This angered officials in the Indian Army who pushed for preferred treatment for
their ex-officers. Furse, however, rebuffed them repeatedly, adding that internal
candidates who had many years of service usually filled senior positions in the colonial
services.84 At one point, the Indian Office led ex-officers to believe that there were a
large number of vacancies in the colonial services and that some were specifically
reserved for them. False, Furse asserted, and “only in very few exceptional cases that the
candidates turn out on examination to approximate at all to the standard of selection for
the Colonial Services” would they be considered.85 Similarly, Furse spurned white British
local hires as much as possible, even though some colonies (often the West Indies,
Ceylon and Kenya) often pushed for their inclusion. Furse perceived these men as
81 Fiddian minute, 11/23/1920. “CO 877/1/56909: Appointments for Ex-Officers of Mesopotamia Civil Administration,” n.d., 1, National Archives, Kew. 82 Grindle minute, 12/14/1920. Ibid., 5. The Mesopotamia Civil Administration reported directly to the Indian Army during this period, with the Indian Army seconding many of its administrators. 83 Furse minute, 9/13/1921. “CO 877/1/43041: Appointments for Redundant Indian Army Officers,” 4. 84 Furse memo on ex-officers, 10/12/1922. “CO 877/2/50633: Employment of Officers Retrenched from Army under Economy Measures,” 1922, 2, National Archives, Kew. 85 Furse to Dixon, 11/15/1922. “CO 877/1/43041: Appointments for Redundant Indian Army Officers,” 56.
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generally “inferior” types, and he believed selecting them was bad for the services, as it
opened appointments to “undue pressure from Colonial Legislatures.”86
Furse and his allies similarly worried about having administrators who were too
old and utilized age as a criterion to force older and less pliable administrators into
retirement. The Colonial Office would set age range limits, generally ranging from the
early 20s to the mid 40s, depending on position, for new Colonial Service recruits, but in
most cases would only appoint those in their early 20s. An exception to the rule, medical
personnel, could start at a later age than other administrators due to their time training.
However, even with medical appointments, staffers still gave preference to junior men
who “have borne the burden and heat of the day” in junior positions over older men who
were in private practice and were thinking about switching to public administration late
in life to get a good pension.87 Furse consistently valued youth over experience. Older,
less virile men could be perceived as weak by their colonial subjects and were not fit as
representatives of the Empire in these junior positions. Furthermore, contemporary
medical advice argued that they were less physically able to succeed in the tropics.
Furse’s preference for youth went against the assumptions many candidates had
about open positions. The Australian committees pushed though some older potential
recruits, but the Colonial Office rebuffed them each time due to the Colonial Office’s
preference for youth over experience.88 Hiring committees eventually learned to rebuff
86 Furse to Gent, 2/7/1930. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” n.d., 156, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 87 Fiddian minute, 7/12/1927. “CO 554/74/2: W.A.M.S. Promotions Sanitary,” 1927, 19, National Archives, Kew. 88 Minutes of 2/6/1931. “University of Melbourne. Victorian Committee on Colonial Appointments. Minutes, 1930-40, 1946-53,” 3.
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older and married candidates, even if they had good colonial experience.89 Recruitment
boards still tended to nominate candidates who were older, even older than maximum
limitations, in the hope that a candidate’s superior qualifications might outweigh the fact
he was older. It was, however, “useless” for anyone to recommend candidates above the
maximum limit, and the Colonial Office even preferred “men to be nearer the minimum
than the maximum age and to be unmarried.”90 Furse constantly complained of applicants
with “wrong motives,” those who thought that the colonial services were a useful landing
place to hide their failures elsewhere.91 After unification in 1932, retirement ages were
also normalized amongst all colonies. Too low an age (like 50) would mean a very high
pensions bill and the potential loss of efficient officers retiring in their prime. Too high an
age, however, meant that colonies could be saddled with officers who “might have
outlived their real usefulness but whom [sic]…might be very difficult to remove.”
Therefore, the Colonial Office settled on 55 as a normal retirement age and in exceptional
cases no older than 60. Officers over 50, with the consent of the Colonial Secretary, could
even be “compulsorily retired” at any time.92
Candidates for the colonial services had to have an athletic physique, in part
because of health concerns but also as a means to exclude older men. The colonial
administrator physically embodied the British Empire to most of the colonized, so Furse
89 Report on Application of Mr. F.C. Keane, forwarded to Furse, 7/22/1929. “CO 877/6/13: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Central Selection Committee for Australia.,” n.d., 62, National Archives, Kew. 90 Furse’s Memorandum of Information as to the Australian Organisation, Issued 1929 updated November 1931. “University of Melbourne. Victorian Committee on Colonial Appointments. Minutes, 1930-40, 1946-53,” 8. 91 Furse to Major Macdonnell, 8/7/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/2/3. Furse: 1928. Canada Portion of Trip around the World,” n.d., 10, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 92 The Colonial Administrative Service Scheme of Unification, 3/5/1932. “CO 850/11/1: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. Unification of the Colonial Administrative Service. Eastern Posts.,” 1933, 134, 140, National Archives, Kew.
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and others believed; therefore, this administrator had to have “undoubted physical
fitness.”93 Administrators needed to play sports – not necessarily well, but because
exercise would keep them in good shape in the tropics.94 Sport and games were tools to
promote good health and keep an athletic build, all with the goal of maintaining a certain
ideal.95 Although prowess at sports was not a necessity, it was a benefit. Applications to
the service routinely noted how well candidates performed in university rugby, cricket,
and rowing.96 Most administrators lived in remote districts, and therefore needed a broad
understanding of fitness regimens in order to maintain both their overall health and
physical appearance. Medical advisors routinely inspected potential recruits during their
selection and training and could advise the removal of any candidate with insufficiently
developed physical characteristics.97 Guest lecturers noted that tennis, golf, polo and
cricket were all played in some portions of the Empire, with some stations having better
facilities than others.98 Another told probationers to make themselves thoroughly
comfortable in their new postings in part by exercising regularly.99 Some colonies had
specific requests about health. For example, Ceylon wished for police recruits of a certain
93 Notes on 9/7/28 Meeting with Furse. “University of Auckland Registrar’s Correspondence,” 4. 94 Furse’s Memorandum of Information as to the Australian Organisation, Issued 1929 updated November 1931. “University of Melbourne. Victorian Committee on Colonial Appointments. Minutes, 1930-40, 1946-53,” 8. 95 Laura Fair has a fascinating chapter on British use of football in their attempts to control urban populations. Furse and others were also concerned about the amount of sports their administrators played. Laura Fair, Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945 (Oxford: J. Currey, 2001). 96 One New Zealand applicant was suitable to a local recruiting committee in part because he won his rowing blue as a member of College in an Inter College Tournament. Registrar to Acting Dominion Liaison Officer, 3/10/1936. “University of Auckland Registrar’s Correspondence,” 118. 97 Albeit still needing the permission of the Secretary of State for the Colonies to fully oust candidates. Furse minute, 12/6/1924. “CO 877/3/57672: Question of Minimum Age Limits of Candidates for Appointment to Tropical Africa,” 1924, 2, National Archives, Kew. 98 Talk by Mr. D.S. Thomas, 11/10/1927. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 12. 99 Guest Mr. S.M. Ashley, late Resident at Calabar (Nigeria), 3/7/1928. Ibid., 57.
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height and, “if possible,” those not wearing glasses.100 Both Furse and colonial governors
feared fresh administrators “breaking down” in the tropics. This could lead administrators
to “play the fool” out in remote districts and embarrass the Empire. Furse believed that if
administrators did not project a physical ideal, the entire system of British rule could fall
into disrepair. Thus, an inability to manage his own health would be a great risk to both
the administrator and the Empire.101 Because they believed that the administrator ruled
though the power of persuasion, Furse and others in London thus insisted that their ideal
candidate needed to be “fitted to stand the stresses and strains which life in the tropics
imposes.”102
Administrators, in part because they were socialized during the course to think so,
also believed in the importance of sport in their daily fitness routine on the ground. Each
station was slightly different, but tennis and golf were, humorously according to a former
Secretary of Zanzibar, “diseases prevalent amongst the white community wherever two
or three are gathered together.”103 Finding good tennis partners and a usable court, one
probationer wrote, was itself good exercise.104 Sporting events, even more than eating
and drinking, formed the lynchpin of European social life in remote districts.105 If there
were enough players, some districts featured rugby games that perpetuated the racial
100 Jameson minute, 5/15/1929. “CO 877/6/2: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointments in Ceylon.,” 14. 101 Governor of Sierra Leone to Amery, 5/4/1925. “CO 877/3/57672: Question of Minimum Age Limits of Candidates for Appointment to Tropical Africa,” 19. 102 Furse’s Notes on the Recruitment Scheme, 9/4/1928. “University of Queensland: Employment of Graduates – Colonial Appointments, 1917-1954,” 98. 103 Guest Mr. A Bosley White, former Secretary of Zanzibar, Meeting of Club on 2/23/1928. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 40. 104 Armitage to parents, 8/15/1929, from Kakamega, Kenya. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” 10. 105 Tripe to parents, 9/14/1929, from the Boma, Kasulu. “MSS Afr S 868/1/1. Tripe: 1928-29 Letters Written on Board Ship, at Oxford, London and Kasulu in Kisoma Province, Tanganyika.,” 166.
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colonial divide. One newly placed administrator wrote to his parents that a few visitors
meant they had enough to make up a team to play against the local native school, but
neglected to report the outcome.106 One administrator, however, complained to his
parents, “Why, at a tennis party...we were ten all told. Nearly as bad as the Kingston [a
posh London suburb] tennis club, and the standard of play was almost worse.”107 Many
worried about staying fit and yearned for initial posts away from large cities. In cities,
one stayed indoors too often: half the people in city postings, wrote one, “seem fattish
and…most of them seem yellowish and rather pasty faced.”108
Furse codified, recruited, and attempted to maintain his ideal administrator from
the 1920s onward through an increasingly complex, worldwide system of recruitment. He
saw future value in placing a young, single, imperially inexperienced sporting man and
utilized ongoing discourses about fitness and youth in order to advance his ideal. These
traits went hand in hand with Victorian ideals about manliness and gentlemanly behavior.
Corresponding to these classist and gendered dialogues was a racial discourse
surrounding whiteness and Britishness that, due to geopolitical and local concerns,
proved to be much harder for Furse to control.
Race
To those who hired administrators throughout the early 20th century, racially, a
white European could be the only plausible option for an administrator for the British
colonies. This, however, would be broader than the de jure requirement of being of
106 Vesey to father, 8/17/1930, in Gombe, Bauchi, Northern Provinces Nigeria. “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” n.d., 23, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 107 Denny to parents, 8/25/1929: N’Changa. “MSS Afr S 791/1: Denny: Letters and Journal Entries on His Way to N Rhodesia and on His First Tour,” 68. 108 Vesey to father, 7/29/1930. “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” 11.
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British origin. The issue of appointing other white Europeans arose in 1919 because of an
order by the War Cabinet stating that appointees to the Home Civil Service must be
naturalized British subjects. Furse defended one potential appointee to the colonial
service, an ex-British Army officer of Polish extraction, to his coworkers in the Colonial
Office: “I would just as soon have an Assistant District Commissioner of ‘pronouncedly
Polish mentality’ as one of pronouncedly Cornish, Manx, Sinn Fein or Glaswegian.” Any
officers who had served in the war, he thought, could claim to be “considered British at
heart.” Other staffers overruled his argument, however, but did not go so far as to make a
public statement about the de facto rule that the Colonial Office did not employ
“aliens.”109 Nevertheless, “British” was malleable. Potential Jewish recruits, for example,
were permissible to all those who dismissed the Polish “alien,” specifically because there
was no Jewish state, as there was with Poland. Although some colonies might have had
issues with these hires, like Mauritius with its French population or Middle Eastern
mandates, as long as someone of Jewish origin was a British subject he was acceptable.
Again, these staffers did not wish to make a public statement of this policy.110 The
exception for Jewish hires was Palestine, as staffers did not wish to anger Palestinians,
who were the main group that filled local positions. Therefore, they preferred proper
British (i.e. non-Jewish) recruits.111 One administrator even had to swap his upcoming
109 “CO 877/1/43006: Naturalised British Subjects,” 1920, 3–5, National Archives, Kew. 110 “CO 877/3/950: Employment of Officers in the CO of Jewish Origin,” 1924, National Archives, Kew. It is unclear if the applicant in question was a Jewish person who had immigrated to Britain before WWI or if he had been born in Britain to a Jewish family. 111 Newbolt minute, 5/4/1928. “CO 877/5/4: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Application from Jew of German Nationality for Appointment in Palestine or Any Mandated Territory.,” n.d., 3, National Archives, Kew. Although some Jews were assigned to Palestine, including Herbert Samuel, the Higher Commissioner of Palestine from 1920-25, the Colonial Office preferred non-Jewish candidates for most positions during the interwar period. “Herbert Louis Samuel | Jewish Virtual Library.” Accessed January 22, 2016. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/samuel.html.
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posting from Cyprus to Palestine because a Jewish administrator changed his name in
order to try to get around the policy and be posted to Palestine.112 Dominion candidates
also fell under the “British” category, as one New Zealand recruit confidently described
himself as “British born” on his application form.113 Additionally, the zeal that Furse
showed towards the recruitment schemes meant that those from the Dominions were
certainly British in the eyes of many of the powerful people in the Colonial Office.
Furse and others attempted to refine the racial component of an imperial
Britishness after World War I. European traits were the understood prerequisite to join
the Colonial Service, although the exact meaning and requirements were in flux. The
racial definition for acceptable whiteness became narrowed from European to British.
Various bureaucracies were involved in defining the proper racial traits, and the ideals of
European blood and British heritage intersected in conflicting ways after 1919. The
Colonial Office, Indian Office, individual colonies and Dominions all contributed to this
process. Each had its own bureaucracies and motivations. The Indian Office, due in large
part to local political concerns about South Asians being eligible for positions of power,
had the strictest definition of “European.” An I.C.S. officer needed two European parents
and those “Europeans must be from India or Britain.” Therefore, Australians, New
Zealanders, South Africans or Canadians were technically ineligible for the service.
Although there were many exceptions, the Indian Office was reluctant to make any de
jure changes for fear of South Asian agitators trying to embarrass the administration.114
112 Kenneth Blackburne, Lasting Legacy: A Story of British Colonialism (London: Johnson, 1976), 16. 113 Albeit later in the decade. Application Form, 1928. “MSS Afr S 868/3/1. Tripe: 1928-47 Correspondence between He and the CO in Reverse Chronological Order, Including Application to CO, Etc.,” 103, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 114 India Office to Colonial Office (forwarded to Governor General), 5/8/1918. “University of Queensland: Employment of Graduates – Colonial Appointments, 1917-1954,” 144, 127.
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Other colonial governments, like Egypt and Sudan, had the same requirements as
India, to the chagrin of Dominion representatives. The Colonial Office partially
sidestepped the issue, however, by declaring that candidates for services like engineering
needed only to have received their education in Britain, Australia, or, when
representatives there complained, New Zealand – in essence continuing to exclude South
Asians.115 Generally, the Colonial Office allowed administrators with a Western
European background (e.g., French or German) if at least one of their parents was British
born, but some discretion was allowed.116 The Eastern cadetships (Hong Kong,
Singapore, Sarawak, Malaya, etc.), due to their association and bureaucratic history with
India, required two British parents for administrators, akin to India. Hence, in 1925, one
candidate with French parents was allowed to join the forest service in Colonial Office-
staffed Kenya, whereas his brother was ineligible to join the Sarawak Civil Service two
years later. Both were “quite English in manner and speech” and the denied Sarawak
candidate “should be well worth consideration for either an Education or an
Administrative post,” but the Sarawak recruitment officer had to refuse him, causing
confusion and frustration within both the family and the colonial bureaucracies.117 Cases
of potential recruits causing local and imperial angst would continue to crop up during
this period, revealing the competing racial hierarchies throughout the Empire.
Even though British Dominion personnel had served in the African colonies and
dependencies for at least a generation before World War I, these cases were exceptional
and no formal machinery existed for these recruits before Furse. Canadians served in the
115 Prime Minister of Australia’s Office to Registrar, 7/24/1918. Ibid., 119. 116 Calder minute, 7/21/1927. “CO 877/4/12: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Naturalised British Subjects,” 6. 117 Blaxtly to Furse, 7/18/1927. Ibid., 3.
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Indian and Colonial Services, and by 1928 even counted two of their own as colonial
governors in Sir Percy Girouard in East Africa and Sir Gordon Guggisbery in the Gold
Coast, both influential colonial policy wonks.118 The logistics for hiring Dominion staff
required the cooperation of the relevant Governor General and British ministerial heads;
not only did high-level officials in Dominions and London have to correspond directly,
but replies were slow and information was scarce.119 Yet preferences were against such
appointments, so even in times of dire need, the will for placing suitable Dominion
candidates did not exist on either side. During World War I, the Colonial Secretary asked
Australian officials numerous times if they could spare some Papua administrators for
work in colonial Africa. In theory, this could happen, Australian officials responded, but
Papua’s administration did not want to lose any of their staff, nor did any of the staff
show a willingness to transfer over.120 Lack of cooperation went in both directions.
Although Britain had seconded administrators to Australia and Papua during the war,
there were only ten during the whole conflict, none having stayed longer than one year,
and all were of a military nature.121
118 Both Canadians had advisory roles to the Colonial Office during the 1920s in regards to recruitment and training of administrators. Amery speech to Canadian Club of Winnipeg, 1/17/1928. “AMEL 1/4/17: Leopold Amery Papers: Empire Tour Speeches: Canada,” 1928, 66, Churchill Archives Centre. 119 For example, one Australian who had served in the Papua civil service applied to the Colonial Office in 1914. Letters took months to respond due to the need for more information on his background. The candidate was actually a terrible fit for the Colonial Services in general. A former supervisor described his past services as “very unsatisfactory for some considerable time…generally his duties are performed very carelessly and without the slightest interest…. Certain duties allotted to him…have proved his utter unsuitability for such responsibility.” Governor General of Australia to Secretary Harcourt, 2/10/1915. “A11804/1915/14: Colonial Service - Applications for Appointment, 1914-1916,” 1914, 4–6, Australian National Archive. 120 Numerous requests of this nature went from the British Colonial Secretary to the Governor General of Australia during the conflict, none fulfilled. “A11804/1915/14: Colonial Service - Applications for Appointment, 1914-1916.” 121 “B1525/801/2/98: Conditions Relating to Employment of British Soldiers in Colonial Service, 1915-1934,” 1915, Australian National Archive.
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Before the centralization of recruitment and hiring in the Colonial Office, various
colonial governments were extremely hesitant to allow Dominion candidates in their
ranks. The colonies believed that the remaining Dominions would see this as favoritism
for one Dominion over the others and therefore force them to reserve a certain number of
posts for their candidates. Even those physically located in the territories in question were
suspect. For example, Australians serving in Egypt and Sudan during the war naturally
foresaw positions opening up to them once the conflict ended. Their forces had some
engineering graduates, and optimally some could stay on, working in the irrigation
projects of Egypt, Sudan, and perhaps even India.122 None of these territories was
interested, however. Egypt at least was willing to offer all facilities to Dominion students
but refused to pay any salaries, while Sudan refused to participate altogether.123 The
Indian government matched Egypt’s offer, but revealed their apathy towards Dominion
candidates when they took over a year to respond to Australia’s request.124 Hence,
although Dominion candidates could theoretically work in colonial posts, and some did
before the 1920s, these examples were few, and most colonial bureaucracies placed
hurdles in order to quash potential candidates. Therefore, it was not until Furse and
Amery helped craft a scheme to recruit Dominion candidates, first in Canada in 1922 and
then in New Zealand and Australia later in the decade, that significant numbers of
Dominion candidates joined the colonial services as proper British representatives.
122 Governor General of Australia to Colonial Office, 5/24/1917. “University of Queensland: Employment of Graduates – Colonial Appointments, 1917-1954,” 146. 123 Walter Long (of CO) to Governor General of Australia, 11/19/1917. Ibid., 144, 127. 124The Indian Office was disinterested in changing any regulations, especially when South east Asian Indians were arguing that they too should be eligible for numbers administrative posts. India Office to Colonial Office (forwarded to Governor General), 5/8/1918. Ibid.
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Colonial Office staffers initially had a straightforward view of racial categories
after the war; they heavily preferred candidates of “pure European descent” for imperial
representatives.125 This conflated definition, equating “white European” with “British,”
quickly unraveled due to extenuating circumstances. Amery expanded the Colonial
Office’s remit during the interwar years, a process that was formalized with the reforms
proposed by the Warren Fisher Committee. As a result, the Colonial Office recruited,
trained and placed administrators who had previously been hired locally. Local rules and
regulations, however, had led to a heterogeneous hodgepodge of racial categorization.
Once brought under the mandate of the Colonial Office, the underlying racial foundation
became the fear of placing “coloured” or, even worse, “mixed blood” administrators,
making white European British even more important of a racial category. This fear grew
dramatically and sparked a shift away from de jure and de facto rules requiring a white
European background towards a narrower definition requiring a British one. Being
British born was, Furse and the Colonial Office staffers believed, a harder racial test to
pass. For example, one Canadian recruit in 1927 caused anxiety. Although the Colonial
Office wished greatly to recruit Dominion candidates, he was “not of purely European
descent.” The Colonial Office staffers were unsure of the exact requirements; Furse wrote
that it would be unwise to appoint anyone “who from a knowledge of their antecedents,
or from their personal appearance, might be suspected of having a mixture of non-
European (I mean of course, coloured) blood.”126 Another issue arose in 1928 when a
125 Milner (SOS Colonies) to Officer Administering the Government of Queensland, 9/28/1920 Ibid., 57–58. Although some specific positions of power were open to non-European races, lower level imperial officials like clerks were usually of local Indian, African, or Asian descent. 126 Furse minute, 4/19/1927. “CO 877/4/15: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Canadian University Graduates Not of Pure European Descent,” 1927, 2, 4, 6, National Archives, Kew.
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“West Indian Negro” residing in Canada applied via the recruitment board there for a
position with the Nigerian Government Railway. Furse told his contact in Canada that
this was a “very difficult question, and one about which we have to be extremely
circumspect.”127 Furse tried to see if there were any engineering positions in the West
Indies, British Honduras or British Guiana where “certain appointments” allowed for
candidates of color, but found none. Staffers felt that “it is most important that no
indication should leak out that men are rejected for the Colonial Services on account of
colour.”128
The fear of “coloured blood” arose numerous times during the interwar period.
For example, in 1927, a naturalized British citizen who was half black applied for a
position. Ormsby-Gore summed up the confusion caused by “white European” and
“British” being conflated: if a French, German or other subject of “decent European
stock,” with an English education, could join the Colonial Service, what stops admitting a
British born African, Asian, or non-European race candidate “or (worse still!) men of
mixed race.”129 This fear of the mixed-blood candidate soon became the cornerstone of a
redefined exclusionary racial policy. It became “quite obvious” to London officials that
codification was needed due to these conflicting cases; therefore, they excluded
“coloured British subjects” officially in 1927, although they wanted no public
announcement for this new policy.130 This fear of a mixed-race projection of imperial
power thus led to the exclusion of groups that earlier would have been acceptable
127 Major Macdonnell to Newbolt, 7/13/1928. “CO 877/5/1: Canadian University Candidates: Central Dominion Selection Committee,” n.d., 16, National Archives, Kew. 128 Newbolt to Macdonnell, 8/4/1928. Ibid., 14. 129 Ormsby-Gore minute, 7/21/1927. “CO 877/4/12: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Naturalised British Subjects,” 4. 130 G. Green minute, 7/20/1927. Ibid., 6.
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administrators, like the Polish and French examples above. The Empire needed to be
British and unquestionably European white. Mixed race administrators would call into
question not only the ordering of the British Empire but also the continuation of
European imperial domination.
Both Boer South Africans (and Boers elsewhere in the African colonies) and
French Canadians were seen as untrustworthy. Furse and the staffers felt that they could
not be certain of a Boer’s or French Canadian’s unquestioning loyalty. The fear of local
South Africans recruiting for the imperial services also hinted at fears of men of mixed
blood due to the diverse European population in South Africa. Certain ethnic
qualifications needed to be met, according to de facto rules laid out in the interwar years,
and South Africans of Boer descent were certainly unwanted and perhaps even ineligible
for the Colonial Service because of their lack of British birth. Colonial Office staffers
feared the “political question” of receiving “an occasional application from a Dutch
South African.” It was better, they decided, to not have a recruitment scheme at all in
South Africa to dodge the issue.131 In other words, Boers were not British enough to
represent the Empire properly.
Furse similarly fretted about the politics of including French Canadians in the
colonial services. Doubts existed about the willingness of French universities to supply
candidates. Furse and others believed that Francophone Canadians’ devotion to the
Empire could not be nearly as strong as Anglophone Canadians. Concerned over how
imperial dictates would be understood in Canada, the Governor General of Canada (the
representative of the British government there), Lord Byng, prodded Furse to make a
131 Furse minute, 3/19/1931. “CO 877/7/3: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. South African Candidates: Selection of Graduates.,” n.d., 6, National Archives, Kew.
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special effort with the French schools when he first started recruiting in Canada in 1922.
Byng informed Furse that it “would be an excellent thing if one or two good French
Canadians could be selected from time to time for the Colonial Services.”132 Hence,
Furse made direct overtures to the French universities. After learning of an opening for a
French language teaching position at the Royal College, Mauritius, for example, Furse
wrote his contact at Laval University in Quebec City. A native French speaker would be
at an obvious advantage for the position, Furse wrote, plus a French Canadian would
likely find the society of Mauritius, being of largely French extraction, especially
congenial.133 The French university officer warned that a large number of potential
candidates were paid more and usually had positions available in Quebec; therefore, the
only people likely to be interested were young clergymen for whom teaching was a
matter of duty and devotion. This clearly confused Furse, as his reply did not come for
two months, presumably because he had to do lots of research into the question. A
“Roman Catholic clergyman,” who possessed the necessary educational qualifications,
could be “considered,” he wrote, but this generally was a euphemism used when Furse’s
office wanted to avoid touchy political questions.134 The French Canadians, likely
sensing that the imperial government had little interest in a Roman Catholic – Furse used
the term, whereas they had not originally – clergyman, ignored his letter and did not
respond. Furse became frustrated by the lack of response from the French universities and
doubted that there would be another opening so suitable for a French Canadian in the
near future, thereby abandoning Lord Byng’s request.
132 Furse to Byng, 9/8/1922. “CO 877/2/10693: Selection of Canadian University Students,” 9. 133 Furse to Nolin, 11/28/1923. “CO 877/9/4: Appointments Department: Canadian University Candidates: Correspondence with Montreal University,” 1923, 7, 9, National Archives, Kew. 134 Furse to Nolin, 2/26/1924. Ibid.
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Colonial Office staffers consistently feared including British South Asian Indians
in the services. In 1921, staffers of the Colonial Office decided not to inform the India
Office of tentative recruitment schemes for university graduates from the Dominions.
Indian universities would want to be involved, and the Colonial Office would be hard
pressed “to find decent excuses for not inviting Indian universities with the selection of
baboos [Hindu clerks] for administrative appointments in Africa.”135 When approached
by Indian applicants, Furse’s office partook in an awkward game of dodging the issue:
“…our method so far has been to do all we can to avoid telling them openly that they are
ineligible on racial grounds.” Both the applicant and Furse’s office had to fill out lots of
forms and “eventually [we] find some excuse or other to turn them down on the score of
competition, etc.” Some applicants got crafty, however. Two applicants in 1921 quoted
the recent Conference of Prime Ministers (held during the 1921 Imperial Conference)
statement that there “should exist no difference in the status of an Indian British-born
subject with that of any other.”136 Both of these applicants applied for a number of posts
in succession and had to be turned down with differing excuses – none of which was the
true reason, their being Indian. 137 Furse turned to the various colonial services for
feedback on this issue and a “Council C” made up of Colonial Office and colonial
government representatives convened in 1921. East and West African representatives
both described how the de facto policy was banning Indian appointments, especially in
political, police or educational appointments, although some technical appointments
might have been a possibility. Although various options were mulled over, the Council 135 Grindle minute, 9/24/1921. “CO 877/1/18108: Openings for Graduates in Colonies,” 8. 136 Furse memo, 8/29/1921. “CO 877/1/43122: Application from Natives of India: Procedure,” 1921, 2, National Archives, Kew. 137 M. Chowdury and PL Gupta were the individuals applying for posts. Council C Meeting Minutes, 10/5/1921. Ibid., 10.
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decided that the politically expedient policy was to do nothing; the Colonial Office would
discriminate against Indian applicants but not “announce that Indians are ineligible for
appointments.” Furthermore, they would not “base the non-selection on racial grounds if
candidates ask why they have not been selected.”138 The Colonial Office therefore hoped
that the issue would resolve itself – i.e. British South Asian Indians would stop applying
for posts.
British South Asian Indians did not accept the lack of a policy, however. The
Colonial Office position unraveled within two years when one earlier applicant, P.L.
Gupta, MB (Bachelor of Medicine), ChB (Bachelor of Surgery), tried again, asking a
direct question to Furse’s office about an advertisement for medical positions in Africa:
were these positions open to Indians with British educational qualifications?139 This letter
went unanswered for two months while “Council C” reconvened. One of Furse’s
assistants told the Council that the earlier policy had an inherent flaw. Replying to Gupta
in 1921 that there were presently no vacancies for which he would be eligible, “and yet at
the same time [continuing] to advertise the posts,” meant that “[Indians] must realise the
true position, i.e. that they are regarded as ineligible.”140 The Council again thought it
inexpedient “for reasons of high policy” to state publically that Indians were ineligible
for any branch of the colonial services. Yet its position remained that it was still
undesirable to appoint them. If the Colonial Office allowed Indians into the services, the
public would see the services as mixed. Therefore, recruiting white European British
subjects would become more difficult. However, the Council decided to submit the
138 Council C Meeting Minutes, 10/5/1921. Ibid., 12. 139 PL Gupta, MB, ChB to Appointments Secretary, 8/17/1923. Ibid., 13. 140 Newbolt minute, 9/18/1923. Ibid., 15.
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question to the Colonial Secretary himself.141 Some members on the Council realized
quickly the ridiculousness of their argument. Flood lamented:
‘In other words,’ we could not make up our minds either to tell the blunt truth or to settle some form of words to get round it…I don’t know what to suggest; my own inclination is to say bluntly that he is ineligible, but I recognize the awkwardness of so doing.142
For medical positions, another member thought, it would be straightforward to just point
out that medical officers tended to be European staff; therefore, applications of European
descent were the only ones taken.143 By November, fully four months after receiving
Gupta’s letter, Fiddian timidly wrote to Furse’s office: “I think you might leave it
unanswered now?” as there had been no decision on how to reply.144
This lack of a policy continued until Passfield in asked the staffers directly for a
policy memorandum on color restrictions concerning colonial appointments of all grades
for the Warren Fisher Committee.145 A South Asian Indian had approached Passfield’s
office, inquiring about Colonial Police service, prompting him to ask of the likelihood of
a South Asian Indian being selected.146 Initially, staffers gave a vague response: “there is
no chance of a suitable vacancy arising for a long time to come.”147 Passfield did not
appreciate this answer, and thus demanded a more thorough explanation of policy. The
group council hurriedly reconvened (with most of the same people from 1921). It warned
that in most colonies the position concerning a color bar was “convoluted,” but stated that
141 Council C Meeting Minutes, 9/26/1923. Ibid., 16. 142 Flood minute, 10/3/1923. Ibid. 143 C. Stratheys minute, 10/12/1923. Ibid., 19. 144 Fiddian memo, 11/22/1923. Ibid., 22. 145 T. Drummond Shields (Undersecretary of State for Colonies) to Jeffries, 1/2/1930. “CO 877/7/2: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Natives of India.,” n.d., 15, National Archives, Kew. 146 Passfield to Furse, 1/8/1930. Ibid., 23. 147 Edgcumbe (of CO) to S.P. Sur (applicant), 1/13/1930. Ibid., 21.
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in most cases locals could apply for subordinate positions (e.g., clerks). Indians, for
example, would not be acceptable to the local population of places like Hong Kong or
Ceylon, “though Indians, like any other British subjects, are eligible for appointment in
all other departments.” In East Africa, in theory, there was no reason why a suitable
Indian or African should not rise to highest appointment, but in practice this would give
rise to considerable difficulty, as conditions of service for different races “vary…largely
on account of the varying effects of the climate on persons of different races.” West
African colonies employed locals as much as possible, the council claimed, but
“experience shows that the native is ready to accept a white man being in authority over
him, or another native of his own country, but he is not willing to accept a coloured man
from some other part of the world.” Therefore, in most colonies the question was not so
much one of color as one of domicile.148 The council even had the audacity to cite their
own ruling from 1921 that limited the appointments department in citing racial reasoning
for selections.149 Passfield acknowledged the broad principles but bemoaned the unclear
policy towards South Asian Indians: “There should be no colour or half-colour bar at all,”
he said, but the principles in the memorandum were fine, with the provision that “local
people” may include South Asian Indians.150 The de facto policy of exclusion withstood
Passfield’s attempt to broaden eligibility. This meant that South Asian Indians were
extremely limited in their ability to become imperial representatives and could not have
managerial posts.
148 Minutes of Group Council, 1/23/1930. Ibid., 9–11. 149 Memorandum for Group Council (circa 1/1930). Ibid., 14. 150 Drummonds Shields minute, 2/15/1930. Ibid., 5.
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Conversely, local candidates in some colonies, especially those like Ceylon that
were moving towards some form of self-rule, were encouraged by the Colonial Office’s
racial policies. Ceylonese administrators feared that the unification of the colonial
services would halt progress towards self-government. Unification, the governor of
Ceylon warned, “was resented politically as incompatible with further progress towards
self government as a hindrance to the promotion of Ceylonese to the higher posts and as
[a] definite set back to Ceylonization of the [local] Service.”151 Staffers had to quickly
justify their de facto racial policy and at the same time quell the fears that Ceylonese staff
could be forcibly transferred to other colonies. “It cannot be too strongly insisted that
unified service is not based on race but on qualification,” the reply to the governor wrote,
and the inclusion of Ceylon would in no way militate against the political progress of the
island.152 The Colonial Office assured Ceylonese officers that they would not be liable for
compulsory transfer to another colony.153 Staffers went into logistical tangles to come up
with a workable policy that would obscure their racial criteria. They decreed that the
question of staffing requirements in most colonies was not “so much one of colour as of
domicile.” Local appointments would be favored whenever possible, they stated (even
though this was a lie), but “where it is necessary for administrative reasons” to bring in
an outside officer, “then, generally speaking, that officer has to be a European.”154
Although Furse regretted that “we cannot come out into the open in this matter for all
151 Telegram from Governor of Ceylon to SOS Colonies, 5/30/1932. “CO 850/11/1: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. Unification of the Colonial Administrative Service. Eastern Posts.,” 119. 152 Draft Telegram from SOS to Governor of Ceylon, 7/5/1932. Ibid., 117. 153 Cundliffe-Lister to Governor of Ceylon, 2/1/1933. Ibid., 66. 154 Minutes of Group Council, 1/23/1930. “CO 877/7/2: Colonial Office: Appointments Department: Registered Files. Appointment of Natives of India.,” 10.
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appointments,” because of how unfair it was to Indian applicants, the unannounced policy
continued throughout the interwar period.155
British, therefore, was a term defined both by parentage and race, but no one in
the Colonial Office wished to explain that to outside applicants or make an official
statement informing everyone about the de facto policies that permeated various
apparatuses of the Empire. British became an, in theory, semi-static racial category
instead of a marker of being a British subject. British Canadians, Australians, New
Zealanders and South Africans who had proved their Britishness by a personal interview
in London were suitable to represent the Empire, whereas Boers, French Canadians and
British people of color or mixed background were not.
Conclusion
Furse and Amery believed that the ideal administrator, once filling the lower
ranks of the colonial services, could eventually push out undesirable appointees, allowing
for a revived British Empire. This ideal administrator would be young and inexperienced.
He would be young because of the future value of placing a 22 vs. a 30 year old – the
younger man would have a longer career and could displace more obstructionist or
unwanted senior administrators. He would be inexperienced because of the fear of
contamination by the influence of rival imperial administrations and, most importantly,
because he was more easily educated about Furse’s view of imperial administration, in
comparison to an imperial recruit from, say, India or South Africa, who would be tainted
by his previous imperial experiences. These administrators could only be white British,
and the term British itself was redefined in the 1920s to exclude other Europeans, as well
155 Furse minute, 1/18/1930. Ibid., 3.
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as South African Boers and French Canadians. European racism discriminated against
British Indian recruits, but the Colonial Office struggled to codify this racism as official
policy. Finally, the most important trait to Furse et al was the personal factor – a trump
card that allowed Furse to determine the suitability of every candidate. This broad
mandate increased Furse’s power to appoint administrators.
Furse and his allies, as they continued to tighten their control over British imperial
administration, wished to project an image of physical strength, youth, whiteness and
respectability via their administrators. London officials codified traits during the interwar
years, a noted shift from the earlier ad hoc quality of useful administrative traits. Furse
and his allies believed that imperial representatives in the field were the physical
embodiment of the British Empire to the colonized. These bureaucrats refined the optimal
projection of British to the Empire. No longer could a solely racialized definition,
essentially synonymous with whiteness, work as a distinguishing feature due to fears of
mixed blood that would call into question European domination during a period of global
strife. In choosing these administrators, Colonial Office officials feared that
ungentlemanly, aged, or mixed race selections would cause the colonized to disrespect
the Empire and could call into question European domination. The fragile imperial
system of power could be destroyed if the colonized did not respect the men in the field.
Therefore, Furse and his allies at the Colonial Office disseminated their desired traits to
the recruitment bodies in Britain and around the world in order to homogenize the sorts
of administrative recruits that would physically embody the Empire.
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CHAPTER FIVE: RAMIFICATIONS
Introduction
Furse tried to create a uniform representative who, via selection and training,
would act predictably once in the field. This representative should share Furse’s mindset
towards Empire – as a unified, coherent whole that should be economically developed by
cooperative imperial agents. This scheme failed. Externally, geopolitical rivalries and the
economic Depression distracted British policy away from imperial questions. More
importantly, Furse’s presumably uniform administrators were anything but once they got
to their postings. Although they worked well with the technical departments, the day-to-
day running of Empire distracted them from implementing any large-scale projects. Many
even criticized Furse’s ideal of Empire or simply were more concerned with experiencing
a foreign land as their predecessors did.
Furse’s grand plans for the administrative apparatus of Empire were an attempt at
quasi-professionalization in that he attempted to instill a new mindset into probationary
administrators. Furse wanted his new administrators to see themselves as part of a larger
superstructure that was greater than simply their district or immediate co-workers.
Probationary administrators should see themselves as working towards a larger goal of
unifying and solidifying imperial rule, largely with the managed economic development
of Chamberlain’s theoretically underutilized imperial “estate.” Some of Furse’s reforms
towards creating this new mindset were successful, including the promotion of
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cooperation between the administrative and technical branches and the increasing
complexity of his surveillance state. The information gathered on probationers allowed
Furse and his allies to monitor and promote from afar for the first time, marking some for
success and banishing others to remote posts for their entire careers. However, his
attempt at creating a more professional mindset failed in part because of Furse’s
insistence on a patronage model. As the individual in charge of recruitment, training and,
later, promotion, Furse hampered a more professional, efficient and meritorious system
from emerging. Probationers, in addition, had little concern for Furse’s vision of Empire
once in the field. Once in the field, most probationers were interested in experiencing the
colonial Empire and doing as little work as possible. The work they had to focus on was
the routine day-to-day running of the Empire, cooperating with the technical services in
many cases, which they had first learned in the Oxbridge course. Most importantly, and
external to Furse’s reforms, geopolitical and economic concerns limited the political or
economic will in Britain and the Empire for any grand projects. Therefore, with all these
limitations, by 1939 Furse managed to transform the administrative apparatus of the
Empire and create a complex surveillance state that allowed London officials to know
more and more about their colonial administrators in the field, but he was in reality
unable to make any substantial changes to how the Empire ran on the ground.
Professionalization at the Oxbridge Course
Furse attempted to reform the apparatus of the British Empire in order to allow a
centralized, unitary ideal of economic integration and development to emerge. However,
his administrative reforms were too shallow and often had little follow through. A fully
professionalized structure, with meritocratic hiring, placement and promotion, threatened
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Furse’s increasingly powerful position in the system he created. He yearned to control the
levers of power so greatly that he ended up filling the administrative ranks with
administrators with his idealized Victorian traits - the same traits of the obstructionist
men on the ground that he tried so hard to remove in the first place. These ideal
administrators were often times anything but, as many actually had little intellect and
relied on Furse’s “force of character” to acquire positions in the Empire. The outcomes of
professionalizing probationers during their course year and Furse’s increasingly complex
surveillance regime reflect the incongruences of Furse’s reforms. In addition, although
the relationship between Colonial Office and the Colonial Services that emerged during
the mid-1930s meant that London officials knew an increasingly large amount about their
functionaries in the field, those functionaries did not seem to care.
Furse and his allies did not want test results to be a significant determinant of
entry and carried this aversion towards testing into the Oxbridge course. A professional
model without patronage would remove discretionary power from Colonial Office
staffers. The Colonial Office was careful not to take the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.) line
of failing candidates who tested below a specified score, as staffers largely agreed that
the I.C.S. failed to properly take into account gentlemanly traits. The personal factor
loomed large in the minds of Colonial Office staffers, and this insistence ultimately
saddled them with some probationers who were not particularly intelligent. Therefore,
although from 1926 probationers were tested in both universities, this was not systematic
– some subjects tested at the end of term, while other subjects did not test at all. Staffers
simply did not trust that tests measured the traits they cared about. One probationer did
poorly in his first term in 1926 and even missed his law test, but, because there were no
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rules on how well each probationer had to do on the tests, Colonial Office staffers merely
shrugged and thought that he should get a warning to do better his second term.1 The next
year probationers with low marks also were only warned.2 Although staffers soon became
frustrated with the poor results, they realized that there was no effective way of “bringing
this failure home to [probationers] and they have all been allowed to sail [to their initial
colonial postings].”3 Many staffers were wary of large tests at the end of the course and
thought that a number of smaller tests to track each probationer’s progress would work
much better to be able to track the effectiveness of the course. More to the point, they
feared that “elaborate examinations to prove detailed knowledge [would] provide a
definite standard, failure to attain which would involve certain cancellation of
appointment.”4 This might thus deter probationers with the proper gentlemanly traits
from continuing. University contacts disagreed, and felt that end-of-term examinations
could help keep probationers in line. For example, when visiting an agricultural lecture
mid-term, there were a large number of absent probationers. Handlers believed that the
threat of exams could scare probationers into paying attention.5 Staffers at the Colonial
Office relished this tracking ability and made sure to let those who were slack in
attending lectures know that they were “to be hauled over the coals” and warned that
their work would be watched closely, but initially that was as far as they were willing to
go.6
1 “CO 554/74/1: Tropical African Services Course,” 1927, 5, National Archives, Kew. 2 Calder minute, 12/19/1927. Ibid., 40. 3 Calder to Downie and Gent, 4/29/1927. Ibid., 16. 4 Gent to Truslove, 2/27/1928. “CO 554/77/4: Tropical African Services Course,” 1928, 44, National Archives, Kew. 5 Van Grutten to Furse, 2/28/1928. Ibid., 37. 6 Bevir to Truslove, 1/14/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” n.d., 152, National Archives, Kew.
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Obviously stupid or outright apathetic probationers finally irked even the most
test averse staffers. By 1928, tired of not being able to follow up on poor results outside
of vague warnings to slack probationers, staffers told each university to fashion a test that
would help rank probationers. The bar was set very low, with a 60% score placing a
probationer into the top class and only a 30% or lower making a probationer fail. Failure
merely meant that university contacts were asked to add a brief explanatory report on the
man with reference to his application and interest in the course.7 For example, in 1928-29
at Cambridge, 55 out of 61 probationers passed the test, and the six who did not were still
allowed to pass the course when taking into account their participation in the course as a
whole.8 Mid-term testing still played a role, but low scoring probationers were only
warned, “that a concrete improvement is expected in their [future] work.”9 The tests were
systematized further in 1931, after the Warren Fisher report recommended rejecting
probationers who fell short of a reasonable standard, but this never occurred in reality.
The closest that test results came to actually affecting probationers was that the tests
became a small metric for seniority ranking. Testing never surpassed ideal traits like
gentlemanliness in importance.10 The first poor batch of results in this new post-Fisher
system still only meant that the candidates who performed poorly were “provisionally
warned that they had done badly.”11 Instead, a Board, led not surprisingly by Furse,
vetted those who had failed tests and made recommendations by taking into account other
7 Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting, 4/17/1928. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 24. 8 Calder minute, 2/1/1927. Colonial Service Probationers Committee Meeting , 7/12/1929. Ibid., 35. 9 Van Grutten to Bevir, 1/8/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 157. 10 As evidence of how unimportant test results were, even birthdate was more important– those that were born in January were placed higher than those in March. Bevir memo, 2/28/1931. “CO 323/1132/10: Tropical African Services Courses,” n.d., 104, National Archives, Kew. 11 TASC Examination Board Meeting, 6/2/1931. Ibid., 58.
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factors before depriving a probationer of his appointment.12 Furse argued that it was
important that test results alone should never be used as a basis for calculating seniority,
as doing so could be regarded as a harmful precedent.13 This process also would have had
the effect of removing discretionary power from Furse’s hands. Furse wished to micro-
manage his system as much as he possibly could.
The exact same test was given at both schools after 1931. The tests had the goals
of checking up on the original selection of probationers for imperial service and making
sure that they were making the most of their training time, which was increasingly
expensive. Additionally, tests influenced the teaching of the course, as lecturers would
“naturally keep their eye on questions set in the exams.”14 In other words, they had to
teach to the test. The course, a 1938 report stated, had undergone no material change
since 1926, outside the expansion from two to three terms, and its curriculum was exactly
the same during the whole interwar period until it was cancelled due to the war in 1940.15
Even after World War II when the course was resurrected in 1947, the test categories and
subjects were modeled on earlier ones.16 The hours devoted to each subject changed
slightly year by year, and thus the test would shift, but each test had questions about
agricultural production; law (Islamic, civil and criminal); history, geography,
anthropology; and specialist sections dealing with topics like forestry or medicine.
Subjects and exams were coordinated between the Colonial Office and both universities,
12 Meeting of TASC Examination Board, 6/15/1931. Ibid., 54. 13 TASC Examination Board, 6/29/1931. Ibid., 52. 14 Tomlinson to Cameron, 6/14/1933. “CO 850/3/19: T.A.S. Courses: Examinations: Substitution for Examinations in the Colonies,” n.d., 9, National Archives, Kew. 15 Furse to Secretary of the Colonial Service Probationers Committee Cambridge, 1/26/1938. Dl Tovey (of Colonial Office) to Committee, 7/25/1940. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” 88, 106. 16 Committee meeting, 2/3/1947. Ibid., 118.
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and the test questions were “only aimed at finding out whether the candidate had given
proper attention and interest to these studies.”17
The answers to test questions likely went into Furse’s dossier files and became
part of a larger system of monitoring probationers’ progression towards viewing
themselves as a key functionary of the Empire, and Furse attempted to build upon this
base of knowledge. Furse’s dossier system notably changed the amount of information
that London officials had on the employees of the Empire. The Oxbridge course started
this system of information that increased during the interwar years. Although Furse had
made his surveillance regime more complex over the late 1920s and into the 1930s,
probationary administrators - those who were recruited, trained, and then tracked under
Furse’s system - did not fully comprehend that they were being watched. Some were
happy rising quickly within the imperial apparatus and put this down to luck. Thus, when,
unlike many of his compatriots who stayed in one place for their whole careers, Kenneth
Blackburne was moved around during his first few tours, he wrote in his memoir that
“luckily” he became the Private Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor of Southern
Nigeria on his path towards becoming a Governor in his own right.18 Luck likely had
little to do with it. Blackburne was marked early on under Furse’s system and likely fast
tracked to power from his first postings. The Cambridge handler had first reported during
the course that Blackburne “Has the makings of a useful officer without being
outstanding in any way,” which was just what Furse was looking for.19 On the other side,
one of those banished to an outlaying post for his entire career sensed it was “likely
17 2/16/1938 Meeting. Ibid., 94. 18 Kenneth Blackburne, Lasting Legacy: A Story of British Colonialism (London: Johnson, 1976), 14. 19 Van Grutten to Bevir, Comments on Cambridge Probationers, 4/2/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 98.
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because they forgot about me.”20 Colonial Office staffers could have purposefully done
this forgetting. Furse’s dossier regime certainly allowed for both advancing those marked
for success and banishing others.
Furse’s system became extremely complex and was increasingly useful to London
officials. For example, in 1937/38 the Home Office called the Colonial Office about
recent applicants that had Colonial Service experience. The Colonial Office only knew
vague details about those who had retired earlier. A 1931 retiree “was said to be an
energetic officer, but he did not inspire confidence in his superiors, and on his records he
is not a man whom we should pick.” The Colonial Office knew much more specific
details about an administrator about to retire in 1937. He was passed over several times
for promotion as lacking the positive qualities required and did not have Secretariat
experience, meaning he did not work in the colonial capital in a managerial posting.21
The Colonial Office knew even less of earlier hires, admitting for one that they “have not
got the usual particulars on his education etc. as he was taken on locally in Tanganyika in
1918 on transfer from some clerical appointment.” Because this person retired in 1930,
his record did not have any bad marks and he might have been a good administrator “as
far as our records show,” but the Colonial Office was unclear if he even worked in the
Secretariat.22 Contrast this lack of information with the very specific details of
employment and copies of annual reports that noted general conduct and professional
ability of a geologist hired in 1929 who worked in the Gold Coast and Nyasaland.23
20 “MSS Afr S 1744. Rennie Bere: A Spear for the Rhinoceros,” n.d., 8, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 21 Lloyd (Colonial Office) to Prestige (Home Office), 12/9/1937. “CO 850/104/19: Colonial Office: Personnel: Original Correspondence. VACANCIES. Re-Employment of Vacancies for a Temporary Administrative Assistant in Home Office Fire Brigades Dept.,” 1938 1937, 22, National Archives, Kew. 22 Lloyd to Prestige, 2/3/1938. Ibid., 11. 23 Lloyd to Johnson (Prestige’s replacement), 2/21/1938. Ibid., 8.
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Therefore, Furse’s system greatly expanded the information at hand to political elites in
London and allowed the Colonial Office to gather extensive records on those around the
Empire during the 1930s.
Cooperation
Furse had hoped the course could promote an espirit de corps amongst both the
administrative and technical services, allowing for a more unitary and professional
administration to emerge. The course tried to show probationary administrators not only
that the Empire’s disparate parts should be unified into a more cohesive whole, but also
that the administrative framework of the Empire should reflect this new, optimal unitary
system. The administrators in the course needed to take the technical officers seriously
and view everyone as various pieces in a larger effort. Administrative officers had had a
much longer historical involvement in colonial affairs, as most technical positions were
less than a few decades old and others – like education officers – were interwar creations.
Thus, the administrative officers saw themselves as superior in status and were inclined
to treat other colonial officers as beneath them, reinforcing departmental isolation within
the colonial state.24 Thus, Colonial Office staffers carefully chose guest lecturers who
would tow the proper line and framed the course curriculum around promoting the
optimal cooperative relationship that the non-technical administrators should have with
their technical counterparts in the field.
Ormsby-Gore stressed the necessity of teamwork, “which in the Colonies could
be worked out on a much larger and more effective scale than we had hitherto observed.”
24 As scholars have thoroughly shown. Joanna Lewis, Empire State-Building: War & Welfare in Kenya, 1925-52 (Athens, Ohio: James Currey, 2000); Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007).
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The administrative officer’s role was to smooth the operation of government in the
colonies and better coordinate the needs of the technical departments.25 In other words,
battles between departments over bureaucratic turf were too frequent. Thus, to promote
an esprit de corps and move past a “village outlook,” Colonial Office staffers wanted the
candidates of various branches to mix and know one another. The best space for this was
the club at Cambridge and Oxford.26 The probationers’ clubs at Oxbridge were seen as a
spaces primarily for administrative probationers, but even in its early years the clubs
featured a handful of agriculture probationers, some survey officers and even a couple of
Empire Cotton Growing Corporation scholars.27 Thus, the corps had expanded to include
members from private industry, along with those in various other branches of colonial
government, depending on the university; forestry probationers were only at Oxford,
whereas Cambridge had the agricultural probationers. Probationers thought the club was
“awfully handy” with the information provided, but the “chief thing about [the club] is of
course that it gives one the opportunity to meet and get to know all the other fellows.”28
The clubs physically placed probationary officers of the various branches into one social
space during their training year at Oxford or Cambridge.
Furse and Amery believed that encouraging cooperation between the services
would promote economic development. If all of the various branches worked together
towards a shared goal and vision of Empire, then economic development was more likely
to succeed. Earlier attempts at promoting cooperation relied on ad hoc measures. For 25 “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” n.d., 45, Cambridge University Archives. 26 Under Secretary of State Sir Samuel Wilson, Meeting of Club on 1/25/1928. Ibid., 30. 27 This was another venture of Milner and Amery’s to join business and government in an effort to develop the Empire. Ibid., 108. 28 Tripe to Parents, 2/5/1929, Balliol College, Oxford. “MSS Afr S 868/1/1. Tripe: 1928-29 Letters Written on Board Ship, at Oxford, London and Kasulu in Kisoma Province, Tanganyika.,” n.d., 34, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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example, just prior to the course’s inauguration at Oxbridge, Professor Adams, one of
Furse’s contacts at Oxford, informed Furse about the important work at the Institute for
Research in Agricultural Economics on large-scale agricultural planning. The Institute
wished to oversee economic developments in the Empire, and hoped to become a
clearinghouse for agricultural projects and act as a training ground for agricultural
economics, statistics, and administrative policies. Likewise, the Institute for Research in
Agricultural Engineering hoped its research investigating different possibilities for
agricultural improvement – e.g. crop drying techniques – would revolutionize the
agricultural industrial knowledge of the Empire.29 Nevertheless, because the Institute for
Research in Agricultural Economics did not have a formal arrangement with the Colonial
Office or with any of the colonies, it was not able to exercise any influence. Once the
course was launched, however, Adams and others used knowledge gleaned from the
Institute and other research organizations like it to promote a certain developmental
ideology to probationers.
Given this desire that the imperial services would work together, the goals of the
course, in addition to teaching practical knowledge, (e.g. how to not catch malaria), were
the stimulation of interest “in matters which affect efficiency,” a bureaucratic euphemism
for managed economic development and the training necessary to help administrators
cooperate intelligently with their colleagues in the other branches.30 One professor at
Oxford even hoped to “inspire” the services to work together towards a common goal.31
29 Prof. Adams (of Oxford) to Furse, 2/7/1925. “CO 877/3/18466: Tropical African Service Course: Reorganisation,” 1925, 87–89, National Archives, Kew. 30 “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 1927, 105, National Archives, Kew. 31 Minutes of meeting at Colonial Office to Consider Syllabus for TAS Course, 5/2/1929. “CO 323/1047/2: Tropical African Services Course at Oxford and Cambridge: Examination of Syllabus; Minutes of Meetings,” n.d., 44, National Archives, Kew.
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There was a “crying need for better co-operation,” wrote one report of a committee
headed by Furse, “between the administrative and specialised branches,” as the
advantages of knowing what the other branches did and how they could work together
productively would lead to a more efficiently-run Empire.32 Ormsby-Gore similarly
believed that Forestry, Agriculture, Education and the non-technical administrative
departments should all learn about each other’s work and goals, and especially
understand the advantage of cooperation instead of competition among branches when
they come in contact with each other in the field.33 When visiting the universities during
the training in 1928, Ormsby-Gore made clear that he wished to see all of the various
probationers under training or about to go abroad, including agricultural probationers, in
order to make sure these goals were succeeding.34 One missionary speaker went even
further in describing the ideal of a centralized state capitalism, and hoped that
cooperation would work so wonderfully that a rural developmental unit would come into
being, controlled by a council of civil servants from the various departments, and,
unsurprisingly, missionary bodies.35
The non-technical administrative probationers did not have to become experts in
the methods and techniques of other scientific branches like Forestry, but the course’s
goal instead was to reinforce the importance of branches working together for,
ostentatiously, the social and economic welfare of the tropical colonies under their
purview. Previously in most colonies, the District Officer (the role probationers were 32 “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 107. 33 Furse minute, 6/11/1926. “CO 554/70/5: Tropical African Services Course: Transfer to Oxford and Cambridge,” 1926, 16, National Archives, Kew. 34 Agricultural probationers were sent to Trinidad to complete their training. Ormsby-Gore to Bell, 1/20/1928. “CO 554/74/5: Tropical African Services Course, Oxford and Cambridge: Employment of Outside Lecturers,” 1926, 16, National Archives, Kew. 35 Oldham, 1/18/1934. “CDEV 1/2: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1931-1938,” n.d., 69, Cambridge University Archives.
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training to become) used to do everything, Ormsby-Gore reported. After World War I,
however, the District Officer relied in large part on the technical departments, so that now
he should see himself as a pivot point, interested in the work of others and hoping for the
success of their shared mission. The prosperity of the colonized subjects under the
District Officer’s purview was almost entirely dependent on agriculture and cattle,
Ormsby-Gore argued, so it was critical to work closely with agricultural officers.36
Scientific officers were very important also, another guest lecturer told the probationers,
but the administrative service was even more so because it coordinated the other
branches.37 The administrative officer thus needed a basic understanding of their needs
and goals. “Mr. Amery once said that the future of the Empire lay: first, in the
development of Science, and second, in human understanding and common sense.”38
Thus, another speaker asserted, understanding law, agriculture, survey and engineering
would give insight into the problems facing the technical services that probationers would
need to work with closely during their time in the field.39
Guest speakers at the club continuously reaffirmed the importance of knowledge
of other departments’ roles in their talks. The administrative officer, masterfully guiding
the other departments, could thus more easily transform the Empire into an asset,
ideologues hoped. Agricultural experts needed to be instructed by administrators to
concern themselves with the products and the growers in their districts, and medical
officers could be directed to better provide for the needs of laborers.40 Another lecturer
36 Ormsby-Gore, Undersecretary of State for Colonies, 2/3/1929. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 117. 37 Under Secretary of State Sir Samuel Wilson, Meeting of Club on 1/25/1928. Ibid., 30. 38 Mr. E. J. Arnett, Senior Resident of Nigeria, 11/29/1928. Ibid., 106. 39 G.J.F. Tomlinson, late Secretary for Native Affairs, Nigeria, 10/14/1929. Ibid., 155. 40 Oldham, 1/18/1934. “CDEV 1/2: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1931-1938,” 68.
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agreed, and even stressed the “omnipotence” of the administrative officer in matters
involving the health of the colonized in his district. With the aid of the medical officer, he
could improve local sanitation and nutrition greatly. Thus, the Administration, Medical,
Veterinary and Agricultural Departments needed to work together to accomplish great
things.41 Departments like Forestry also were very important, one Director of Education
told the probationers. Their work was the hardest to imagine, and thus as the coordinating
administrator, probationers must understand how to communicate the long-term goals to
the colonized in their district. It was hard enough for administrators to visualize the
results of good forest policy that would only come in fifty or sixty years, let alone for
“the natives” to do so, he remarked.42 Thus, probationers were often tested on how
cooperation should work. They had to estimate the importance of scientific investigation
and the application of scientific methods in the overall development of tropical Africa,
for example.43 One test asked probationers both to prove their knowledge of the functions
of the Agricultural Department in the administration and development of a colonial
possession as well as to describe the chief aims of the Forestry Department.44
The importance of this broad knowledge of other departments in the end was to
aid in the promotion of a centrally managed economic development, with the
administrative officer as the coordinating hub of all the other departments. Science, one
of Furse’s reports declared firmly, played an important role in economic development, so
administrators needed to understand how they could cooperate intelligently with experts
41 Dr. O’Brien, Secretary to the Colonial Office Advisory Medical Committee lecture, 11/14/1935. Ibid., 94. 42 H.S. Scott, late Director of Education, Kenya lecture 11/21/1935. “CDEV 1/2: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1931-1938,” 99. 43 General Paper I: History, Geography and Islam, 1933. “CDEV 8/9: Colonial Service Course: Examinations Records: Examination Papers for the Course on Development and Mphil, 1932-1981,” 10. 44 Forestry, 1934. Ibid., 31.
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in other fields. For example, probationers had to understand the agricultural branch’s role
in export products, their monetary value and “their place in local agriculture…[and in]
world markets.” This export-oriented agriculture, Furse wrote, funded beneficial
programs like education, public health and communications.45 As the “blanks on the
map” had been filled in, a Senior Resident declared to the probationers, the goal of
Empire was to solve the problems of production, and to open up underdeveloped areas as
producers of economic products to be exchanged for an ever-increasing demand of
manufactured goods.46 Ormsby-Gore warned probationers that the goal of the Empire
was not to force an imitation European civilization on places like Africa, but to help
create a genuine African civilization with its own merits – thus aping the vocabulary of
traditionalist indirect rule. However, his genuine African civilization incorporated
European style economic development, and only close cooperation between the official
departments could forge this.47 Other speakers aligned their views with the traditionalist
approach. The duty of the white man, one overtly paternalistic speaker told the
probationers, was to gradually advance the physical and mental powers of the natives to
help them to understand western culture in order to properly work with their British
imperial agents. In order for this civilizing mission to succeed, all departments needed to
fully cooperate.48 Thus, another warned candidly, in order to re-establish the prestige of
the British Empire, the colonial administration must work hand in hand with its
agricultural counterpart in order to widen the educational opportunities available to the
45 “CO 554/76/9: Tropical African Services Course: Committee Report,” 117, 120. 46 Mr. E. J. Arnett, Senior Resident of Nigeria, 11/29/1928. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 102. 47 Ormsby-Gore, Undersecretary of State for the Colonies lecture, 3/4/1928. Ibid., 46. 48 Dr. JH Oldham, Sec of the International Missionary Council, 1/28/1932. “CDEV 1/2: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1931-1938,” 27.
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colonized under their purview.49 Colonial Undersecretary Wilson, a fervent ally of Furse,
thus emphasized the need for agricultural and economic understanding, since “the vast
resources of the Colonial Empire, its potential for trade, were not even today appreciated
by its members.”50
Although Furse and his allies placed a great amount of time and effort in
promoting cooperation between the services, entrenched departmentalization still cropped
up during the course year. In each university, the club’s composition shifted over time,
largely due to economic circumstances brought about by the global depression during the
interwar years.51 Thus, by the early 1930s, agricultural probationers were the majority of
Cambridge Club members because of an administrative hiring freeze by many colonies.52
This produced at least one humorous moment that proved that bureaucratic infighting did
not start in the colonies. In 1933, with administrative probationers in the minority, the
Cambridge Club debated the motion, “‘The Scientific services play a more important part
than the Administrative Services procuring the ultimate welfare of the Colonial Empire.’
Motion was lost by 5 votes to 9, from members abstaining.”53 Thus, even though Furse
and others wished desperately to break down the barriers between administrative silos,
rivalries still occurred.
Furse’s attempts at promoting cooperation actually had tangible effects on the
day-to-day lives of his probationary administrators. For example, probationers took some
49 Sir James Currie, chairman of the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, 5/2/1932. Ibid., 30. 50 Under Secretary of State Sir Samuel Wilson, Meeting of Club on 1/25/1928. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 29. 51 Calder and Jeffries minutes, 6/16/1927. “CO 533/680: Allowances to Officers Taking the Tropical African Services Course during Leave,” 1926, 6, National Archives, Kew. 52 Secretary’s Report, 11/19/1931. “CDEV 2/2: Colonial Service Probationers Committee: Minute Book, 1926-47,” n.d., 59, Cambridge University Archives. 53 Meeting of Club, 11/2/1933. “CDEV 1/2: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1931-1938,” 65.
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of the information about agriculture and forestry into their initial postings. Robert
Armitage, on one of his first tours in 1929, reported how he used knowledge from the
course about strigaweed, a parasitic plant that lives on the roots of maize and millets and
prevents crop development. He had learned during the course that the only effective way
to deal with it was to leave the land fallow, which was difficult in thickly populated areas,
so he started prosecuting Africans in his district for planting in areas that he had deemed
susceptible to strigaweed. He was annoyed that he would have to go into enormous
arguments about his policies with the Africans who disobeyed.54 Armitage also bragged
about driving through “what I think I was told was called Savannah Forest during that
excellent course that I did in Oxford.”55 Similarly, Robert Scott reported that some
Africans had asked him if he could help keep rats out of their granaries. Scott bragged
that he had “evolved a very elegant system of implements half way up the legs on which
the granaries stand - rather like the iron mushrooms [at home].”56 There had been a
section of the agriculture class on this very subject during his training. Likewise, David
Vesey told how, once in the field, he worked closely with an entomologist during a
“Locust Destruction Campaign” near Lake Chad.57
Furse’s emphasis on cooperation succeed in binding the administrative and
technical branches in the field, to a point. Administrators saw themselves as part of a
larger whole that needed to work together with their technical counterparts in the field
and reported specific examples during their first tours. This increasingly professionalized
54 Armitage to parents, 12/22/1929, Kakamega. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” 58. 55 Armitage to parents, 10/12/1929. Ibid., 35. 56 Scott to family, 2/17/1929. In camp, Umia Pachua. “MSS Brit Emp S 417/2: Scott: 1928-29 Letters Home,” n.d., 59, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 57 Vesey to father, 10/4/1930. “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” n.d., 66–68, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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mindset stopped there, however, as a lack of interest, ability caused by more important
and immediate concerns of day-to-day imperial rule and funding hampered even the most
tentative of managed economic developmental plans.
In the Field
Although Furse attempted to indoctrinate his new probationers into viewing the
Empire as an asset to be managed and developed and to see themselves as the
professionalized agents of this process, little of this knowledge transfer occurred once
probationers went into the field. Firstly, probationers were most interested in the
romanticized and Orientalized locations and peoples of their postings. For them, the idea
of the Empire was not one as a potential economic asset to be actively developed, but as
an “other” to be marveled at and leisurely enjoyed. Playing sport, going on safari,
hunting, drinking tea and imbibing with other Europeans were the highlights of
probationers’ recollections of their times in the field. When it came to their day-to-day
running of districts, probationers were quickly thrown into the tasks of routine
maintenance and largely had little time or interest in advancing Furse’s goals for an
integrated and rationally developed Empire. That being said, probationary administrators
did take some of the knowledge they acquired during the Oxbridge course and applied it
directly and indirectly in the field. This knowledge transfer was not uniform, as various
other influences – including other administrators, Africans themselves, and personal
experience – caused slight variations in each case. The course still provided a base of
knowledge for reference and comparison and slightly affected administrators’ view of the
Empire and their role within it. Nonetheless, Furse’s hope of promoting a centralized and
interwoven ideal of economic development quickly floundered once in the field.
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During their course year, and in contrast to Furse’s hopes of inspiring new
administrators, probationers mostly were interested in the experiences of the trip out to
postings and examples of on-the-job problems. One speaker, Mr. D. S. Thomas, who had
spent ten years in Kenya as well as some time in Uganda and Nigeria, vividly painted
imperial scenes for the probationers. In his description of the trip to his posting, he
marveled at the scenery of Africa and fashioned the land as best when devoid of Africans.
Going to East Africa, “one travelled through tropical coastal forests to desert, desert to
scattered bush…and the fortunate might see increasing herds of giraffe.” The people he
was excited about seeing were Europeans: “Passing through a great game reserve, still
climbing, one reached Nairobi and 6000 feet. The train then plunged down into the Rift
Valley with its European settlement, up to Lake Victoria.” Thomas mostly removed
Africans from his recollections of the trip out, and even when they were present, he
relegated them to the background. In a journey to Northern Nigeria, “One awoke in time
to see dawn and the crossing of the Niger…the landscape covered with grasses; the
population extraordinarily sparse on account of the old Julani slave-raids.” Africans only
appeared in his narrative when Thomas started complaining about the day-to-day job
itself, where they were an annoyance that an administrator had to deal with or pawns he
had to command. The average workday began early, as before breakfast, an administrator
instructed labor gangs on their tasks for the day and inspected the police and the prison.
His recollections were therefore directly associated with exploiting Africans for their
labor (the gangs) and reassuring himself of the availability of the tools of colonial state
power (police and prisons). Annoyances arrived early in an administrator’s day, as one
had to conduct interviews “about boys who have run away, husbands disappointed in
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wives or dowries, wives overburdened with kids and husbands.” A new officer, Thomas
warned, was asked to settle all sorts of questions.58
Once they completed the course, administrators were sent off in batches to their
postings. For logistical reasons, there were generally two sailings for African postings,
one for East Africa (Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Kenya and Uganda) and another for West
Africa (Nigeria, Gold Coast, etc.). The West Africa sailing continued on to the Southern
African colonies (North and South Rhodesia, Nyasaland). These boats, commercial
steamers with regular service, were spaces for interacting with other administrators and
other Europeans headed to Africa for various reasons.59 Administrators positioned
themselves within a larger colonial hierarchy during these encounters with “old African
hands.” Vesey complained that the bankers whom he ate with regarded new
administrators “as the frivolous young Administrative Officers who don’t quite know
what they have let themselves in for, if you know what I mean.”60 Denny cheekily
reported that his tennis partner on the boat “is a traveller in Mobil oil - and seems to
divide his time equally between having injections of 914 against Malaria, and shooting
game. Where the oil comes in I have as yet failed to discover.”61
Once landing, probationers’ accounts of Africa and Africans portrayed an
Orientalized conception of Africa – as an asset to be viewed and appreciated instead of
seeing Africa as an asset to be economically developed, as Furse hoped. Scott’s first
58 Talk by Mr. D.S. Thomas, 11/10/1927. “CDEV 1/1: African Services Club, Colonial Services Club (1927), Overseas Services Club (1954) Papers: Minutes, 1927-1931,” 12–13. 59 Among these people were political elites. One new administrator, Robert Scott, thus had a talk with a Liberal and a Conservative Member of Parliament on political theory on his way to Uganda. Scott to Family, 8/20/1928. “MSS Brit Emp S 417/2,” 19. 60 Vesey to father, 7/19/1930. “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” 4. 61 Diary, 8/1/1929. “MSS Afr S 791/1: Denny: Letters and Journal Entries on His Way to N Rhodesia and on His First Tour,” n.d., 19, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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impression of East Africa enchanted him, but its immensity made him uneasy. He
linguistically depopulated Africa of Africans. On the train from the coastal city of
Mombasa towards Uganda, he reported seeing coconut groves across the desert, then
herds of game – gazelle, zebra, and ostriches – within 100 yards of the train. He wrote of
Africa as either empty of human activity or as under proper agricultural production, not
surprising considering the course’s ideological thrust. Once arriving in white settled
Nairobi, he racially divided the city into well-built excellent shops and “the most
atrocious tin shanties.”62 Likewise, while heading to his post in Northern Rhodesia,
Denny arrived in Bechuanaland, “where we see natives for the first time in the national
costume, very little.” Upon seeing the “real native mud hut” in a rural setting, he snidely
contrasted it with its city counterpart, “a ramshackle collection of oil tins piled one on
another.”63 Others complained of postings that were not foreign enough. “Where I have
been, though attractive,” wrote Robert Armitage about his postings in Kenya, “is too
thickly populated to be very interesting, except as regards the natives.”64 The problem
with being in major cities like Jos in Nigeria, Vesey was told by others, was that one
might as well be living at home for the lack of bush and Africa that one gets to see.65
Scott preferred “a bit of ‘backwoods’ work for a start,” and upon getting that type of
posting, merrily declared that he had been “in many places that have almost certainly not
been visited by another white man since the beginning of Africa - an inspiring and very
62 Scott to Family, 8/3/1929, from The Secretariat, Uganda. “MSS Brit Emp S 417/2,” 7. 63 Denny to parents, 8/8/1929. “MSS Afr S 791/1: Denny: Letters and Journal Entries on His Way to N Rhodesia and on His First Tour,” 24. 64 Armitage to parents, 10/5/1929, from Kakamega. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” 30. 65 Vesey to father, 2/5/1931. “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” 142.
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romantic thought.”66 Administrators were therefore idealizing Africa as populated by
“real” Africans in a “traditional” rural setting instead of as a potential economic asset to
be developed under their guidance.
Administrators on the ground read memoranda and understood the changes
coming to the imperial apparatus, especially with the implementation of the Warren
Fisher reforms. The Colonial Office sent a circular in 1931 to all district officers around
the Empire that outlined the upcoming changes, including the newly created departments
of recruitment and promotions and the unification of the Colonial Service. Furse and
Jeffries, they were told, led divisions that wanted to establish a “personal touch with
officers who may desire, or may be noted for consideration for, transfer.” Officers should
visit these new branches when they were on leave, especially senior officers, “because
they are frequently in a position to supply useful information with regard to officers
serving under them, in amplification of the official reports.”67
Colonial governments too were monitoring their administrators more closely. In
the Gold Coast, for example, administrators got a circular in the summer of 1931
bemoaning the “regrettable failure” of administrators to travel throughout their districts.
They were averaging only 3.87 days a month on tour, versus 4.7 the year before, a
lamentable amount that reduced sympathy between administrators and the people of their
districts. If chiefs only had contact with administrators at district headquarters, the memo
continued, “District Commissioners are creating trouble for the Chiefs and discontent
among the people.” The note ended with an angry declaration that administrators needed
66 Scott to Family, 9/18/1928, written at Masiundi; Scott to family, 2/17/1929. In camp, Umia Pachua. “MSS Brit Emp S 417/2,” 30, 56. 67 Lord Passfield Circular on Reorganization, 3/31/1931. “MSS Afr S 1709/1: Walker: 1930-35. Personal Letters, Reports Relating to His Administrative Service in the Gold Coast,” n.d., 39–41, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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to be on tour “CERTAINLY NOT LESS THAN TEN DAYS A MONTH” to establish
relations of friendship and mutual trust.68 In addition to demanding new reports, various
colonies raised the standards for promotion, especially in the wake of the Warren Fisher
changes. Exams in indigenous languages were a common litmus test from Kenya to
Malaya, while junior administrators were often angry at all the bureaucratic hoops that
they had to jump through, especially during their first few years.69
Some of Furse’s presumably indoctrinated probationers even indicated a
willingness openly challenge their superiors once in the field. After Warren Fisher,
administrators had to write essays on development for their colonial governor and his
staff in order to move from probationary to permanent status (i.e., to secure their jobs). In
the Gold Coast, W.A.R. Walker wrote about the system of land tenure in one district
where he had been stationed. He foolishly chose to openly criticize the paramount chief
system in place there. “I realise that the views set forth therein may not be wholly in
accord with the present policy of administration.” Using forcibly placed central “chiefs,”
instead of supporting indigenous lower-level local leaders, he wrote, hindered the
operation of “indirect rule.” Thus, operating through the local leaders could materially
help colonial subjects, especially by focusing on local economic developmental needs.70
His report earned a commendation from the Governor, but the Secretary of Native Affairs
(who managed the way “indirect rule” was approached in the colony) unsurprisingly took
offense at Walker’s conclusions. He annotated Walker’s report and gave amendments to
68 Northcote, Colonial Secretary, Confidential Circular, 8/1/1931. Ibid., 45–46. 69 “1957/0286703: Application by Mr. W.J. Peel, Malayan Civil Service, for Permission to Study for the Third (Proficiency) Standard in Malay,” July 3, 1936, Malaysian National Archives; “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” n.d., Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 70 Walker to Commissioner of the Eastern Province, Koforidua, 1/1/1933. “MSS Afr S 1709/1,” 83.
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his essay. In brief, the Native Affairs Secretary told Walker that the local governments
should be based on whatever system of native government was found in each state.
Therefore, one plan for all states could not and should not be devised.71 It is unclear if
Walker chose to exit the service after his second tour or if he was told to leave, but this
report was likely a motivating factor for either decision. It and the correspondence
between Walker and his superiors would have likely gone into Furse’s file, haunting
Walker for the rest of his career if he had stayed in the Colonial Service.
Administrators called into question Furse’s attempts at overt economic
exploitation once faced with the realities of imperial rule in the field, both in their initial
postings and later on in their careers. One administrator, David Vesey, only stayed for
one tour in Nigeria due in part to his frustration with the overt exploitation he saw in
various districts.72 The aforementioned Walker had even played the game very well at the
beginning, becoming assistant librarian to the Cambridge Club, so that the Cambridge
contact thought of him as a “keen and industrious little man whose services I much
value.” However, this did not help him when he questioned the imperial system of rule in
his district.73 In Northern Rhodesia, one probationer complained of all the unnecessary
information that the government asked of him. “I can only say, sub-rosa, that a good deal
of the information emanating from this office is altogether erroneous, because we have
not the material to furnish correct answers on.”74 He humorously described creating
annual reports and showed how this information regime operated on the ground:
71 Provincial Commissioner to Walker, 8/2/1933. Ibid., 96. 72 “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932.” 73 Van Grutten to Bevir, Comments on Cambridge Probationers, 4/2/1930. “CO 323/1087/15: Tropical African Services Courses: Probationers Reports, Grants Etc 1929-1930,” 106. 74 Denny to parents, 1/5/1930. “MSS Afr S 791/2: Denny: 1929-1930 Letters and Journal Entries on His Way to N Rhodesia and on His First Tour,” n.d., 72, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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For sheer unadulterated balderdash, for inaccuracies written as facts, and fancies stated as home truths, there has been nothing to equal it in the present century, with the possible exception of last year’s report….we have put the figures in to a hat and a rabbit has come out.75
Likewise in Nigeria, David Vesey assured his parents that his “fine work ‘Supervising the
Native Court’” was actually a fraud in itself: “[The African courts] may be doing the
most colossal frauds and I shan’t find out, such as fining a chap 2 pounds and only
writing down 1 pound in the book so as to keep the rest.”76
A scathing indictment of Furse’s attempts at economic reform came from William
Tripe, a New Zealander who was stationed in Tanganyika for most of his career. Tripe
tried in 1939 to warn his Provincial Commissioner of a state of affairs that was “both
intolerable and incompatible with the ideals of the Administrative Service.”77 Frustrated,
he followed up in 1943 to the Colonial Secretary about the “present dissatisfaction and
lack of confidence” in the Colonial Services. There was a “conscious abandonment of
principles laid down for the Mandate,” like forcing Africans to work for European
enterprises when it was not in their own interests. But his complaints were of no avail. He
had been posted to the Lake Province in 1935 as an assistant district officer, “a sort of
holy land for all administrative officers.” The rich and attractive division he had been put
in charge of was actually in a deplorable state. There was no Native Administration
schools, hardly any courthouses, and limited roads that were in a state of bad repair, all of
which were inflated in official reports. He told his district officer his complaints, which
were forwarded to Provincial Commissioner McMahon, who told Tripe that he would
75 Denny to parents, 1/19/1930. Ibid., 82. 76 “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” 108. 77 Tripe to Provincial Commissioner, 11/4/1939. “MSS Afr S 868/3/1. Tripe: 1928-47 Correspondence between He and the CO in Reverse Chronological Order, Including Application to CO, Etc,” n.d., 29, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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soon be in a “flat spin.” It turned out that McMahon was the former D.O. of the Musoma
district, of which Tripe was especially critical, and “he could not forgive me for ‘letting
the cat out of the bag.’” McMahon had used considerable funds from North Mara in
South Mara to “decorate the shop window.” “As time went on,” Tripe wrote, “I was to
learn how much of the Lake Province was a mere facade.” He lamented the system that
had eventually emerged during his fourteen years of service, where “younger and more
energetic members of colonial services frequently show lack of confidence in this
government believing that service needs reformation but hesitate” to report for fear of
retribution.78
Probationers were part a system of constant rotation and movement throughout
colonial Africa. In Northern Rhodesia, Spencer Reeve Denny lamented that the continual
changing of staff from station to station meant that, “the poor native does not know where
he is, if he has a new [district officer] every six months or year.” He understood that staff
transfers were “but one of the many new changes that can be looked for in the next few
years.”79 The churning of staff meant that routines broke down and policies were
inconsistent. Six months prior, he explained, chiefs could have been told that they would
get separate native courts, and then a new administrator overturned that decision. Denny
thus succinctly summed up “the chopping and changing, which will not let the native
be.”80 Another probationer, Kenneth William Blackburne, likewise described in Southern
Nigeria how he saw a new district officer (D.O.) after a few months on the job, while his
fellow assistant district officer (a subordinate post) had been transferred recently as
78 Tripe to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 9/3/1943. Ibid., 106–110. 79 Denny to parents, 9/29/1929. 80 Denny to parents, 12/15/1929. “MSS Afr S 791/2: Denny: 1929-1930 Letters and Journal Entries on His Way to N Rhodesia and on His First Tour,” 48.
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well.81 His new D.O. proved to be a paper-pushing bureaucrat who “revels in loneliness
and is sometimes not seen for about a fortnight, and has never entertained us at his
house.” The displaced D.O., by contrast, represented the older traditionalist approach. He
had been in the army during World War I and had even met Blackburne’s father during
their service before getting a job in the Empire.82 Stationed in Northern Nigeria, Vesey
accidentally took charge of a district due to the D.O. getting measles, but lamented it as a
“vile job” full of paperwork. “I’m sure this place will get more and more all written stuff
by that awful paper making machine ‘the Secretariat’ at Kaduna, all on paper.” He
summed up the ongoing reforms in this way: “the ‘man on the spot’ not counting at all,
till in the end the same rows will occur as have occurred in India.”83
Some probationers were comfortable with this new system of rule. Robert Scott
wrote how his work in the Secretariat during one of his early tours was not uninteresting,
as he was starting to know what “F-3 and G-6 are used for, and whether they are to be
triplicate or duplicate or accompanied by an Impress order or an A-1 receipt.” He
gleefully filled out forms “crammed full of ‘as per’s and ‘aforementioned’s and ‘having
the honour’s, and sent [them] along to the [Provincial Commissioner].”84 He even wished
that his letters home could be minuted to streamline information. When explaining about
one person whom he had brought up a few months ago, he complained that, “it’s a pity
that we don’t keep files and then I could merely say: Reference my MA 123 of 15th
81 Blackburne to mother, 8/24/1930. “MSS Brit Emp S 460/1/2: Blackburne: 1929-50: Correspondence and Other Papers Relating to Blackburne’s Cadetship in Nigeria,” n.d., 29, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 82 Blackburne to mother, 8/17/1930. Ibid., 23. 83 Vesey to father, 12/22/1931. “MSS Afr S 644: Vesey: Letters Home, 1st Tour, Nigeria July 1930-Feb 1932,” 247. 84 Scott to Family, 9/18/1928, written at Masiundi. “MSS Brit Emp S 417/2,” 24, 25.
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October and my FAT 69 of 18th February.”85 Others merely learned to keep their mouths
shut. Armitage in Kenya, whose “Uncle Ned” was the governor there, reassured his
parents that any questioning remarks about colonial rule or administration were not
relayed to his governor uncle; “you do not credit me with much common sense or esprit
de corps or manners.”86 He would criticize his superiors with his fellow assistant officers,
however, “quite against all the advice given me by Mother.”87
Probationers, once in the field, were met with a myriad of administrative and
logistical problems, all of which hampered their generally lukewarm approach towards
Furse’s managed economic ideal. Their experiences and recollections often matched
those of their traditionalist predecessors. However, Furse’s reforms started to have an
administrative effect, especially in the churning of personnel from station to station and
posting to posting. This frustrated many probationers, although some were comfortable
with the new system that Furse brought about, mainly with the Warren Fisher reforms.
The Depression
The onslaught of the Depression at first threatened Furse’s position, but he
utilized the economizing of colonial budgets to his advantage. During the early 1930s as
the Depression started to set in, colonies tried to stop hiring new administrators
altogether. Due to the reduction in global trade and thus the reduced tariff revenue,
colonial governments could barely afford the staff they already had, let alone provide for
an expansion of their personnel expense. However, Furse paired the threat of smaller
budgets with the implementation of the Warren Fisher reforms to his full advantage. He
85 Scott to family, 6/2/1929. Ibid., 86. 86 Armitage to parents, 11/16/1929, from Kakamega. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/4/4: Armitage: 1929. Letters to His Parents, with Some Press Cuttings Enclosed,” 52. 87 10/17/1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 2204/6/1: Armitage: 1929. Desk Diary,” n.d., 33, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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successfully argued that older administrators, who were on higher pay scales and thus
cost more, should be removed in favor of cheaper, younger administrators who he hoped
were indoctrinated into viewing the Empire as an economic asset. With this argument and
the financial threat of the Depression, Furse was finally able to solidify his changes to the
administrative apparatus of the colonial services around the British Empire.
Although Furse cultivated more allies and formalized his position between 1927
and 1932, the economic slowdown of the 1930s effectively shut down colonies’ ability to
hire and threatened Furse’s recruitment and training apparatus. Budgets were based on
tax and tariff revenue, and, as both dwindled, most colonies enacted harsh austerity
measures to cope. Colonies tried to cancel any new hires from the 1932/33 cohort,
causing representatives of Oxford to fret, “recruitment is a very sensitive plant, of slow
growth. It grows on the ‘snowball’ system - one man attracts another.” The course had
worked well so far, the representative continued, in providing candidates for East and
West Africa, and the services were well known and attracted a good type of man. The
reason this was possible was that the services offered a definite objective, with known
conditions and prospects.88 Cancelling the course, even for a year, could undo all the
good will built up. Therefore, to hold the course together in a minimal state, the Colonial
Office asked all the colonies to estimate their recruiting needs for the next three years to
maintain a level of functional administration, taking into account projected retirements
and estimating other losses (like resignations and deaths) and budgetary restrictions.89
Furse feared that cancelling the course altogether due to the economic slowdown and the
lack of need for new probationers would create a serious loss of efficiency, as lecturers
88 C.E.D. Peters (Oxford Appointments Committee) to Furse, 12/4/1931. “CO 850/3/22: T.A.S. Course. Continuation of Course in 1932,” n.d., 101, National Archives, Kew. 89 Colonial Office Telegram to All Tropical African Governors, 1/8/1932. Ibid., 100.
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would be lost and the administrative apparatus might crumble. More frightening still, the
proposed break would have a serious effect on quantity and quality of candidates coming
forward from Oxbridge, and it would take some years to recover lost ground.90 Massive
reductions threatened Furse’s entire appointment, training and tracking apparatus.
Colonies were unsurprisingly reluctant to take on new hires that they could not
afford. Tanganyika’s Governor thought around ten new administrators would be needed
to maintain a stable level of provincial administration, “but in view of present financial
prospects… the absence of further assistance from the Imperial treasury…will necessitate
further retrenchments [and] I apprehend that it will be impossible to engage any recruits”
for the next two years.91 Nigeria claimed that it was not possible to take any recruits in
1932/33, although it may have been possible if revenues improved to take seven in
1933/34 and fourteen in 1934/35.92 Northern Rhodesia replied that, even with the
retirements of officers, they only needed five a year to maintain levels, but there was no
expansion of staff planned for several years. Two of the four mines in the north recently
had closed, meaning two District Offices employing four officers would soon shut and
the District Officers would need to be relocated.93 Overall, African Governors claimed to
only need 13 recruits for 1932/33, 23 in 1933/34, and 41 in 1934/35. Previous years’
needs were anywhere from 60 to 120 a year.94
Furse and his allies moved quickly to save his framework and even sought to use
the downturn to his advantage. He paraded a report from Cambridge that claimed that a
strong field of candidates was available because industry and commerce were only taking
90 Furse memo, 11/20/1931. Ibid., 109. 91 Governor of Tanganyika to SOS Colonies, 1/18/1932. Ibid., 97. 92 Governor of Nigeria Telegram to SOS Colonies, 2/2/1932. Ibid., 96. 93 Northern Rhodesia Governor to SOS Colonies, 1/12/1932. Ibid., 95. 94 Ibid., 90.
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a fraction of the good men they usually would grab. Sudan and the Indian Civil Service
were also down significantly. This all combined to ensure a particularly large pool of
high quality from which excellent candidates could be recruited.95 Colonial Office
staffers pushed colonies to act upon this opportunity. As soon as the recovery in trade
occurred, they warned, commercial firms would again draw upon university sources.
Therefore, the advantages to taking recruits now would continue the rising standards and
progress made in the last few years. Staffers asked colonies to average out their needs for
the next three years and take more than they originally wanted, especially for 1932/33.96
Nigeria, the largest and most populous colony, accepted the proposition to take more than
it needed. Others, like Northern Rhodesia, declined.97 Even smaller colonies like Hong
Kong saw the value, and it offered to take one candidate in 1932/33 and two in 1933/34.98
Behind this effort, Furse and his allies saw the potential to force senior
administrators to retire, making room for their new, presumably indoctrinated
probationers. One ally reported that there were already unexpected deaths and
resignations that would provide spaces, but more importantly, there were many more
administrators under consideration for forced retirement.99 Another ally, Cecil Bottomley,
who Amery had appointed as the Assistant Colonial Undersecretary in 1927 and he held
the post until 1938, continued to support Furse in removing the old guard.100 He wrote
that there was already a surplus of three probationers from the year before. If they
continued the course, “I cannot help thinking that we should be driven to retiring Senior 95 Extract of letter from Majoy Guy (Cambridge Appointments Committee) to Furse, 2/2/1932. Ibid., 92. 96 Cundiffe-Lister to Colonial Governors, 5/31/1932. Ibid., 3. 97 Bevir minute, 5/23/1932. Ibid., 42. 98 Cunliffe-Lister to Officer Administering Government of Hong Kong, 7/21/1932. “CO 850/4/2: Inclusion of Hong Kong Officers,” 1932, 63, National Archives, Kew. 99 Bevir minute, 5/23/1932. “CO 850/3/22: T.A.S. Course. Continuation of Course in 1932,” 42. 100 “W.C. Bottomley Letters: Administrative/Biographical History,” accessed October 31, 2014, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/blcas/bottomley-wc.html.
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Administrative Officers to make room for Junior Administrative Officers.”101 Furse
pounced on the opportunity that same day – Christmas Eve amazingly. If the choice lay
between denying a career to first rate young men and keeping on somewhat inferior
senior men, “then the Service would on prima facie grounds gain twice over by making
the seniors give way.” He asked rhetorically if raising the standard for entry into the
colonial services should mean that the standard for retention should also rise.102 Although
the Colonial Office could not officially retroactively deny positions to seniors, “at a time
when we cannot waste money it is our duty to interpret [requirements] rather more
strictly than one would in usual times.” Another staffer thought that it would be shrewder
for the governors if this suggestion to remove unwanted senior officers came from the
Colonial Secretary than that they should be left with the unpleasant task of whether to
raise the point themselves.103
Furse used the threat of the Depression to solidify his position and insert himself
into questions about current non-Furse hired administrators. He successfully lobbied to
keep the Oxbridge course in a reduced form and take advantage of a wider recruitment
field. Potential recruits could not find employment with private industry, and therefore
the Colonial Services had access to a higher quality cohort of hires. He took full
advantage of the new powerful role that the Warren Fisher reforms gave him and his
allies to solidify his reforms over the administrative apparatus of the Empire.
Conclusion
Grand imperial plans often faltered once applied on the ground, which numerous
scholars have succinctly described as the difference between colonial state building and
101 Bottomley minute, 11/11/1931. “CO 850/3/22: T.A.S. Course. Continuation of Course in 1932,” 3. 102 Furse minute, 12/24/1931. Ibid., 11. 103 Jeffries minute, 12/24/1931. Ibid., 13.
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colonial state formation.104 As Tony Ballantyne argued in his recent historiographical
essay, current scholars of Empire view the importance of information and knowledge
production as central to the project of modern European, and particularly, British Empire
building. This knowledge about Empire had scientific aspects (mapping “new” regions,
peoples and plants), and religious and secular actors. Imperial agents in the periphery and
metropolis collected and disseminated products as varied as animals, plants, people,
capital, information, and this process of information gathering has revealed the nuances
and contradictions inherent to the project of Empire.105 Another aspect to this same
process was the knowledge production and dissemination within the British imperial
apparatus itself.
The Oxbridge course promoted an economically exploitative vision of Empire
that had been in political circles since at least the late 19th century. Probationary
administrators, Furse and his allies hoped, would be indoctrinated at the start of their
careers into believing that these concepts were self-evident. Guest lecturers and course
curriculum consistently reinforced such views and created batches of probationary
administrators who had a similar imperial base knowledge. Previously, fresh
administrators had learned in an ad hoc manner. However, this knowledge transfer
sputtered for a variety of reasons, most importantly the lack of interest and opportunity
for probationers to apply what they had learned in the field. Thus, Furse’s attempts at
indoctrination were rarely applied in the field and had little effect on the day-to-day
104 For example, see: Julian Go, “Chains of Empire, Projects of State: Political Education and U.S. Colonial Rule in Puerto Rico and the Philippines,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 2 (April 1, 2000): 335; Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley Conflict in Kenya and Africa (London: J. Currey, 1992), http://libproxy.tulane.edu:2048/login?url=http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02560. 105 Tony Ballantyne, “The Changing Shape of the Modern British Empire and Its Historiography,” The Historical Journal 53, no. 02 (June 2010): 429–52, doi:10.1017/S0018246X10000117.
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operation of Empire. Furse’s grand plans started to stall during the Depression, and
geopolitical threats placed his attempts to transform the Empire on hold by the late 1930s.
He did, however, solidify his control over administrative reforms and started to insert
himself into questions over forcibly retiring older, likely traditionalist administrators.
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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION
Scholars have assumed that a less intrusive approach to imperial rule dominated
British policy until World War II, accepting at face value the claim by contemporary
actors that an amateur and low-cost approach characterized British imperial policy
between the wars. Temporally, scholars presume that only after World War II did the
British adopt a more constructive approach, based on economic development of colonies
in preparation for eventual self-government, and that the interwar period was merely an
interlude between two contrasting systems, or ven one that was still characterized per-war
“indirect rule.” Joseph Morgan Hodge argues that the aftermath of the Depression and
widespread social protests and labor unrest in the 1930s and 1940s led to a fundamental
shift of thinking in the Colonial Office towards a more constructive policy of reform. By
World War II, “it was clear to all who cared to notice that colonial living standards were
appallingly low, and that much of the blame could be attributed to the mistakes of past
colonial interventions and capitalist enterprises.” Thus, local resources needed to be
effectively managed and utilized – how best to do this was the debate.1 Michael Haviden
and David Meredith argue that the failure of the interwar period provided the context for
the wartime aspirations for postwar colonial reconstruction and rehabilitation, especially
in regards to the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Bill.2 However, the interwar
period is an important bridge between two ideals of Empire – an earlier one that ran on
1 Hodge, Triumph of the Expert, 205, 231. 2 Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960, 205.
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laissez-faire principles and was guided by local economic development and a later one
based on scientific, centralized management of development. Contrary to much of the
scholarship on indirect rule and the British Empire in Africa, this dissertation shows that
there were major reforms to the infrastructure of the administration of Empire between
the wars. Furse sought to shape a cadre of junior administrators who would embody a
common set of values toward the Empire based on its economic development. Furse
brought a new approach towards recruitment, training, and tracking administrators, one
that he instituted in the late 1920s and 1930s.
Furse was able to take control in part both because World War I called into
question British imperial rule itself and the Colonial Office was a less prestigious
position within the British government. Furse, in office from 1910-1914 and 1919-1947,
served a revolving door of seventeen Colonial Secretaries, slowly gaining control over
the British imperial apparatus in large part due to bureaucratic maneuvers by him and his
political allies and in part due to the missteps of his competitors. The result was Furse’s
coup, one that was, he later boasted, “quiet, persistent and indirect. Anything in the shape
of a missionary campaign was anathema to me.”3 Furse would eventually gather around
him a “little group of men” in the Colonial Office to lead his reforms, first in the
recruitment of administrators and then in their training and tracking. Training centered on
a yearlong course at Oxbridge that was introduced in 1926. This course attempted to
indoctrinate freshly hired administrators into viewing the Empire as an asset to be
developed. Then Furse and his allies centralized the power of the Colonial Office in
London by creating a surveillance regime that reinforced its power. They implemented
3 Ralph Dolignon Furse, Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 223.
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large structural reforms, most importantly the creation of a Unified Colonial Service in
the early 1930s, “which, strictly speaking, was none of our business.”4
Furse’s processes of selection, training, placement and tracking operated silently,
but led to a gradual transformation in British imperial administration, especially in
colonial Africa but also in Southeast Asia, the Western Pacific, and the Caribbean once
his reforms spread to those colonial territories. His administrators, he hoped, would help
advance centralized developmental projects in the years ahead. It is teleological and
perhaps problematic to draw a parallel, but it must be noted that those administrators who
accepted their tasks willingly (or at least kept their mouth shut to their superiors) often
slowly climbed through the ranks. An elite number moved around the Empire and
eventually became governors, like Robert Perceval Armitage (Cyprus, 1951; Nyasaland,
1956-61), Sir Robert Scott (Mauritius, 1954) and Sir Kenneth William Blackburne
(Leeward Islands, 1950-57; Jamaica, 1958).
“From his position,” Furse wrote during the Warren Fisher Committee, the
Appointments Secretary “has facilities for knowing what is going on all over the Colonial
Empire. This gives him a chance of seeing where policy or development is likely to
[affect recruitment].”5 The Fisher Committee recommendations and the subsequent
unification of the Colonial Service allowed Furse to enact a coup and increase his power
over recruitment and promotions. He solidified his position by expanding the surveillance
system initially set up at Oxbridge. Furse’s surveillance system expanded greatly over the
late 1920s to the mid 1930s, coterminous with his and Amery’s reforms to the newly
unified Colonial Service and revamped Colonial Office. Furse and Amery moved to
4 Ibid., 62. 5 Notes on Last Memo (to Lord Passfield), circa 1929. “MSS Brit Emp S 415/4/2. Furse: 1929-31. Warren Fisher Committee: Correspondence and Memoranda,” 36.
211
formally solidify Furse’s and the Colonial Office’s power and accomplish the creation of
a unified Colonial Service controlled by the Colonial Office. This, in theory, would allow
for easier management of administrators by transferring and promoting ones marked for
their usefulness and compliancy. This system would thus allow Amery and Furse’s ideal
of imperial economic exploitation and development to be implemented without fear of
the resistance from men-on-the-spot that had characterized the period from 1890-1914.
However, their gambit failed due to external threats and internal foot-dragging.
Anti-colonial nationalism, global depression and finally World War II reduced the
effectiveness of their plans. Geopolitical rivals – especially Italian, German and Japanese
threats starting in the 1930s – showed the weakness of Britain and undermined the
confidence in Britain’s ability and willingness to protect its colonies from rivals.6 Internal
to the reforms, often Furse’s presumably indoctrinated men-on-the-spot were not seeking
to promote economic development nor did they passively support their superiors in
pursing this goal. The net effect of Furse’s reforms on the ground were therefore
muddled, in no small part due to Furse’s continued reliance on a patronage model. He
placed administrators with the same obstructionist traits as those that he sought to
displace. Furse spoke in the politically convenient voice of rationalization and
professionalization in order to advance his goals and gain valuable allies. He did,
importantly, formalize his control over appointments by introducing the Oxbridge course
and controlling its content, and his control over recruitment all the while pretending to his
rivals that he was not gaining immense power in order to quell opposition.
6 Michael Havinden and David Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960 (London: Routledge, 1993), 196.
212
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.
Furse called his memoir, written in 1962, Aucuparius because he had at one point thought
that he had learned that it was a character in classic mythology, but he could never find
the reference when he researched it later in life. Furse pondered, “I had often wondered
whether my lifetime’s work for the Colonial Service was not a myth.” Perhaps the net he
had woven so finely to catch the proper type of man was now so fine a texture that like a
cobweb it would disintegrate at the touch of other hands: “And the Colonial Empire itself
– might not that also be a myth?”7 Writing a few years after the Warren Fisher reforms
took effect, one of Furse’s allies claimed that members of the Colonial Service were not
chessmen moved around by an invisible hand in Whitehall, nor were colonies a giant
chessboard to be played at will.8 However, this was a lie. Furse’s system of appointing,
training, tracking and promoting transformed the administrators into chessmen moved
around by an increasingly intrusive Colonial Office in London. The chessboard was in
fact the colonies, and Furse’s system of information defined the squares upon which the
chessmen were moved.
7 Ibid., 4. 8 Charles Jeffries, The Colonial Empire and Its Civil Service (CUP Archive, 1938), xvi.
213
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BIOGRAPHY
Jon Moore is a native of Southern California and is very proud to have never lived
south of the 10. He attended California State University Fullerton, where he studied
political science. Before coming to Tulane University, Mr. Moore worked in commercial
real estate and even dabbled in used car sales. His research interests include imperialist
and post-colonialist historiography and the administration of empire.