Political colonial reforms

1A reform that ruled out freedom

In January 1944 General Charles de Gaulle opened a conference of French colonial governors at Brazzaville, in French Equatorial Africa. Africans had helped to keep Free France alive (Unit 5), and the governors met to plan reforms for after the war. They proposed better pay, schools, health care and an end to some of the harshest practices. But before any of their recommendations, they wrote:

The aims of the work of civilisation accomplished by France in the colonies rule out any idea of autonomy, any possibility of development outside the French bloc of the Empire; the eventual creation, even in the distant future, of self-governments in the colonies is to be ruled out.

Source A. Recommendations of the Brazzaville Conference, February 1944. Translated by Ganzaa from the French text quoted in the French Wikipedia article "Conférence de Brazzaville".

Analysing the sources. Source A shows what colonial powers usually meant by reform: changing how a colony was run, so that it would run better for the ruling power, but never questioning who ruled. Yet within sixteen years almost all of France's African colonies were independent. This lesson looks at the political reforms the colonial powers made, why they made them, and how they changed African government.

2Reforms that built the colonial state, 1885 to 1939

Once a territory was conquered, a handful of European officials had to rule millions of people. Every colonial power solved this problem by placing African intermediaries between its officials and the people, but each did it differently (you compared the systems in Senior 2).

• British indirect rule. Frederick Lugard, who governed Northern Nigeria and from 1914 the whole of Nigeria, ruled through the emirs who already governed the north. He later described the system in his book The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922). Where there were no such rulers, as among the Igbo, the British invented them: the warrant chiefs.
• French direct rule. France divided its colonies into districts (cercles) run by French commandants, with African "canton chiefs" often chosen for their loyalty rather than their birth. Under the indigénat, introduced in Senegal in 1887, an official could punish a subject for many kinds of offence, such as failing to pay tax or to report for forced labour, without any trial.
• Belgian rule in Ruanda. Between 1926 and 1931 the Belgian administration reorganised the kingdom: it merged the three kinds of chief into one, removed almost all Hutu and Twa chiefs, and in November 1931 deposed Mwami Yuhi V Musinga, who resisted it, replacing him with his son Mutara III Rudahigwa. The Mwami now reigned, but the Belgian Resident in Kigali decided.

Figure 1. Orders went down each chain; taxes, labour and crops came up it. The systems differed in how high African authorities reached, not in who had the final word.

3Case study: the Women's War in Nigeria, 1929

In south-eastern Nigeria the warrant chiefs had no roots in Igbo tradition, and many used their power to enrich themselves. In 1928 the British introduced a direct tax on men. In 1929, as prices for palm produce fell, a new count of households began. Women, who traded in the markets and had a strong voice in Igbo society, believed it meant that they would be taxed too.

On 18 November 1929, at Oloko, a woman called Nwanyeruwa quarrelled with a man counting the household for the warrant chief Okugo. The women sent palm leaves to summon others, and nearly 10,000 gathered at Okugo's office to demand that he resign. The protest spread through the women's market networks across Owerri and Calabar provinces. At first the women used song, dance and "sitting on" the warrant chiefs, a traditional Igbo form of public shaming, to press them to resign; later, ten native courts were destroyed and European trading stores were looted. By the end of December 1929 colonial troops had restored order, and about 55 women had been killed, according to the estimates historians use.

A commission of inquiry followed. In the 1930s the British abolished the warrant chief system and replaced it with courts and councils closer to local forms of government. The women had forced a political reform, and their protest is now seen as an early sign of mass African resistance to colonial rule.

4Reforms after 1945: sharing a little power to keep a lot

Table 1. Political reforms in two periods. Sources: the Wikipedia articles in the credits and Senior 2, Unit 7.

Why did the colonial powers change course after the Second World War? They were weaker; the United States, the Soviet Union and the new United Nations criticised empires; African soldiers and educated Africans demanded rights; and reform looked like the best way to keep the colonies loyal. The reforms opened elections, councils and parties to Africans, and Africans used them to demand independence much sooner than the colonial powers had planned.

5Discuss

The Brazzaville Conference made reforms but ruled out self-government. Can a reform that keeps the same people in power still improve people's lives? Think of an example from history, or from your own school, where a small change led to a bigger one that its makers had not planned.