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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.

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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

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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).

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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

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.