Colonial Figures Research Articles

Colonial figures and postcolonial reading

Colonial figures and postcolonial reading

The King, the King's English and I

HOW IMPORTANT A FACTOR IS -the English language in the lives of individual Africans? The question is too vast to be attempted in a single article. But there are in any case a variety of ways in which it could be approached. I have written before about the English language and its influence on the growth of African nationalism, the English language and its impact on African international relations, and the English language and its interaction with religion in Africa. This exercise, on the other hand, is of a different kind. It is an attempt to look at language as a factor in the careers of two people-one a king and the other a commoner. The king was Sir Edward Mutesa who was once Kabaka of Buganda. The commoner is myself. Behind both stories is the imperial tradition in whose embrace East Africa had remained for so long. Symbolising the imperial tradition are two Governors who touched the lives of Mutesa and myself in different ways. One Governor was Sir Philip Mitchell, a' towering colonial figure who ruled both Uganda and Kenya at different times and made an impact on the history of colonialist East Africa. The other Governor was Sir Andrew Cohen, the man who deported Mutesa in 1953 and caused one of the most dramatic crises colonial Uganda ever underwent. 1

The Past Population of Britain: An Archaeological Approach

Conjectural estimates of the early population of Britain are subject to wide margins of error. Professor Grahame Clark (1957) has put forward tentative figures of early prehistoric numbers, based upon the native population density in newly colonized lands. The Upper Palaeolithic population density of Britain was compared to that of Alaska in 1867 and the North-West Territories in 1911, and the Mesolithic to that of Tasmania. Since prehistory has no specific dates, being measured in periods of hundreds or even thousands of years, overall numbers must be similarly imprecise in date. Again, the colonial figures themselves are only estimates (the two Palaeolithic estimators being in the ratio 20:3), so that the estimates of prehistoric population might not even be of the correct order of magnitude.Estimates of between a half and one and a half million have been made for the population of Roman Britain in the second century A.D., based upon different interpretations of the evidence for population density of town and country (Wheeler, 1930). Here we have agreement on the order of magnitude, but the estimates are still imprecise in date and size.

A Dominant Colonial Figure

A Dominant Colonial Figure

A Dominant Colonial Figure: William Smith: Educator and Churchman, 1727–1803

A Dominant Colonial Figure: William Smith: Educator and Churchman, 1727–1803