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Y320: From Colonialism to Independence: The British Empire 1857–1965

The governance and administration of the Empire: forms of governance and negotiation

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  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on forms of governance, security and coercion, trusteeship, men on the spot, collaboration and indigenous elites, the use of technology, negotiation.

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Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

How thinly was the Empire actually administered?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Identify the main forms of governance used across the Empire.

    Model answer

    They ranged from responsible government and then dominion status in the settler colonies, through Crown colonies with a governor and nominated council, to protectorates where a local ruler retained his throne under British direction, chartered company rule, condominium as in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from 1899, princely states under indirect treaty relations in India, and, after 1919, League mandates.

  2. 2

    Explain indirect rule and the reasons for adopting it.

    Model answer

    Systematised by Lugard in northern Nigeria and set out in The Dual Mandate in 1922, it governed through existing chiefs and emirs who collected taxes and administered customary law under a British resident, because it was cheap, required very few Europeans, and was held to preserve African society; critics argue it froze and often invented hierarchies, empowered collaborators and blocked educated Africans from advancement.

  3. 3

    Where and why did Britain use direct rule instead?

    Model answer

    Direct administration by British officials was used where no suitable indigenous authority existed or where settlers and commercial interests demanded it, as in much of southern Nigeria, the Gold Coast colony, Kenya's settled districts and the presidencies of British India, and it went with English law, English-language education and the growth of a salaried local bureaucracy.

  4. 4

    How thinly was the Empire actually administered?

    Model answer

    Fewer than 1,200 covenanted officers of the Indian Civil Service governed some three hundred million people, and colonies in Africa were run by a handful of district officers each, which meant that authority rested on prestige, local intermediaries and the credible threat of force rather than on any real administrative presence.

  5. 5

    How did Britain maintain security and coercion in the Empire?

    Model answer

    It relied on the Indian Army, paid for by Indian revenues, as an imperial reserve, on locally recruited police and constabularies commanded by Britons, on punitive expeditions to burn villages and seize cattle, on emergency and collective punishment legislation, and from the 1920s on air control, notably in Iraq, where bombing replaced garrisons as the cheapest means of coercion.

  6. 6

    What did trusteeship mean in imperial thinking?

    Model answer

    It was the doctrine that Britain held colonies in trust for their inhabitants until they were fit to govern themselves, expressed in Lugard's dual mandate of developing resources for the world while advancing the ruled, in the sacred trust of civilisation written into Article 22 of the League Covenant, and in the Devonshire Declaration of 1923 that African interests in Kenya must be paramount.

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