Decolonisation and the “Federal Moment”

Michael Collins

doi:10.1080/09592296.2013.762881

Abstract

Post-1945 decolonisation involved the universal acceptance of nation-statehood as the alternative to imperialism. Nationalism vanquished its transnational competitors, notably imperialism and Marxism. Alternatives to imperial rule that avoided sovereign states on national lines, such as federations in the later 1940s and 1950s, have received less attention from historians. Federations involved alternative ways of thinking about sovereignty, territoriality, and political economy. British interest in creating federations, for example the Central African Federation (CAF) in 1953, offers some new perspectives on the strength of imperial ideology and the determination to continue a missionary imperialism after the Second World War. Federal thinking and practice was prominent at this time in other European empires too, notably the French and Dutch ones. The federal idea was also an aspect of the emerging European community. This is suggestive of a wider “federal moment” that points to the importance of linking international, trans-national, imperial, and world historical approaches.

Highlights

In a minute to Philip Noel-Baker—the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations—Leisching informed him that in addition to the communication from Baring, he had been separately told by General Byers, Chief of the South African General Staff, that the British government’s recognition of Seretse as chief of the Bangwato would “light a fire through all the British colonial territories in Africa which would not soon be quenched.” Leisching went on to tell Noel-Baker that “the very existence of white settlement in these territories depended, in light of the numerical inferiority and defencelessness of the white population, upon the principle that the native mind regarded the white woman as inviolable.” He himself, he added, had been unable to accept the “ultimate logical consequences of this principle of non-discrimination when it takes practical forms affecting oneself or one’s family in terms of miscegenation.” He did not “believe that many who hold to their antipathy to the colour bar would, if confronted with this matter in personal terms, view with equanimity, or without revulsion, the prospect of their son or daughter marrying a member of the Negro race.”[43] The most senior civil servant at the CRO clearly viewed the problem through the prism of both race and gender
The paper looks at the British Labour governments of 1945–51, and some of the imperial challenges faced by Britain in southern and central Africa immediately following the South African election in 1948 and up to the creation of the Central African Federation (CAF) under the Conservatives in 1953
Insofar as federation can be read as a form of the “imperialism of decolonisation,”[5] the politics of Britain’s imperial identity were causal as the British re-articulated justifications for the control of African peoples and resources

Summary

Introduction

In a minute to Philip Noel-Baker—the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations—Leisching informed him that in addition to the communication from Baring, he had been separately told by General Byers, Chief of the South African General Staff, that the British government’s recognition of Seretse as chief of the Bangwato would “light a fire through all the British colonial territories in Africa which would not soon be quenched.” Leisching went on to tell Noel-Baker that “the very existence of white settlement in these territories depended, in light of the numerical inferiority and defencelessness of the white population, upon the principle that the native mind regarded the white woman as inviolable.” He himself, he added, had been unable to accept the “ultimate logical consequences of this principle of non-discrimination when it takes practical forms affecting oneself or one’s family in terms of miscegenation.” He did not “believe that many who hold to their antipathy to the colour bar would, if confronted with this matter in personal terms, view with equanimity, or without revulsion, the prospect of their son or daughter marrying a member of the Negro race.”[43] The most senior civil servant at the CRO clearly viewed the problem through the prism of both race and gender.

Results

Conclusion