EARLY YEARS OF THE COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION: BRITISH STATE ENTERPRISE OVERSEAS DURING LATE COLONIALISM

Abstract

THE COLONIAL (Commonwealth) Development Corporation was established in October 1947 as an instrument for British colonial development. Two distinct strands of state policy governed the purpose of colonial development and thus the purpose and character of the corporation as an institution for development. The two strands of policy were neither logically nor historically consistent with each other and this inconsistency gave ground to a persistent series of conflicts between CDC and Colonial Office, the CO and the Treasury, the CDC and colonial producers. One strand of policy, which came out of the period before 1947, was associated with the Moyne Report of 1938, the Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1939 and the Atlantic Charter of 1942. It was formally admitted within both the Colonial Office and the Treasury that the principle of territorial self-sufficiency for colonial governments' recurrent expenditure and revenue had to be abandoned. British state expenditure would be directed towards the promotion of welfare to pre-empt social unrest and the promotion of investment to make any political possibility for self-government economically permissible. Associated closely with Oliver Stanley, the Tory wartime Colonial Secretary, this welfare strand of policy persisted throughout the post war period and is part of the current development orthodoxy of basic needs and claims by former colonies for national economic independence. The second policy strand belonged to the Labour government period between 1947 and 1950 and was established by Labour's desire to establish British national economic independence from the United States. This followed immediately from the raw material and food shortages of 1947 which were far worse than at any time during the war and which culminated in the August 1947 convertibility crisis involving a renegotiation of the 1945 US loan. To recapture economic independence, or 'viability' as it was called, meant creating non-dollar sources of supply for food and materials and, more significantly, sterling sources (unlike those of the independent Commonwealth or Denmark, Ireland or the Benelux countries) whic}z could be created and