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Title: Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960 by David Meredith, Michael Ashley Havinden ISBN: 0-415-02043-3 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 15 November, 1993 Format: Library Binding Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $105.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Superb account of the iniquities of empire
Comment: This fascinating and scholarly study provides the hard evidence that the British Empire was a disaster for those whom it ruled. For instance, Benjamin Kidd, in 'The Control of the Tropics', wrote that the inhabitants of the tropics had no right to their resources; he held that they must be developed for the general good of the world. In fact they were developed, when they were, only for the general good of the british ruling class, as grasping a bunch of villains as the world has ever seen.

Havinden and Meredith conclude, "Throughout this book we have shown that colonialism and development were largely contradictory and that this produced a gap between the dreams (or myths) of developing the 'great estate' and the economic realities. The structural imbalances in the economies of the British colonies which were apparent by the end of the colonial era were the direct result of the pursuit of the Chamberlain aim of buttressing the British economy with a 'great estate' in the tropics. In the end the Chamberlain dream was abandoned along with formal colonial rule but its persistence over the previous seventy years bequeathed the now ex-colonies a legacy which would continue to inhibit their economic development in the years to come." They wrote, "The Colonial Office's development philosophy still depended upon the belief that once the state had provided a framework ordered government and a basic infrastructure, private entrepreneurs and private capital could be relied upon to initiate and carry out a steady programme of economic advance. ... the development problem was not as simple as this." Pre-1914, "the incomes of most of the inhabitants of the tropical colonies remained pitifully small and their standard of living abysmally low." As now, disgusting levels of wealth fed off vilely low poverty.

Sir Henry Moore, Assistant Secretary at the Colonial Office, wrote in 1939 that, "any proposals for the creation of secondary industry in the Colonial Empire are received with a marked lack of enthusiasm, if not with suspicion. The reason for this, I suggest, appears to me to be found in the more or less unwritten rule that any proposals, whether in the field of industry or tariffs, which give rise to any conflict of economic interest, should be approached from the standpoint that United Kingdom trade interests must rank first, Dominion trade interests second, and those of the Colonial Empire last." For 'trade interests', read fat cats. Plus ca change - yet.