Henry Venn and the Policy of Development

Abstract

The history of European administrations in Tropical Africa has revolved largely round what is comprehensively referred to as the Native Question. It seems there are broadly two things Europeans can do with the 'native' : they can either attempt to develop and spoil him, or try to preserve and stultify him. It is often argued that the French are Developers and the English Preservers. In fact the distinction between them is obscured in at least two different ways. First, both Developers and Preservers have the obligation to promote trade with the various ruling nations. This obligation is at the very root of the whole idea of holding overseas territories. And so compelling is the influence of this obligation on policy that no ruling nation can, or in fact really seeks to, leave the social or political situation in its subject territories undisturbed. Within this general obligation to promote trade, there are usually three possible trends of policy, not two. Where the ruling nation is preoccupied by the problem of creating a stable local administration, it strengthens the hands of the chiefs; where it puts economic development first, it encourages the creation of a new middle class of educated Africans, evolues, assimilados; and where there is a strong settler influence, it directs policy to the creation of a large labour force and becomes consciously indifferent to the consequences of such a policy on the African community. Secondly, in most ruling nations, you find both Developers and Preservers at the same time, though at different periods one or the other may be predominant; and they practise at different times modifications of the three possible trends of policy side by side in different territories, sometimes one after the other in the same territory as situations or the personalities of governors change. This needs to be emphasised. The reputation of English Preservers is so very high that the Developers who, at least in West Africa, were the first in the field, are not often remembered. The object of this paper is to suggest that in the middle of the nineteenth century when Britain controlled only a few enclaves on the West African Coast but wielded influence over a much wider area, the dominant theme of her policy was social and economic development and the encouragement of an African middle class, not the preservation of the traditional

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