BOOK REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 June 1956 |
| Date | 01 June 1956 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1956.tb01493.x |
BOOK
REVIEWS
The
Colonial
Ofice
By
SIR
CHARLES
JEFFRIES.
George Allen
&
Unwin Ltd.,
1956.
Pp.
222.
15s.
(11s.
6d. to
Members of the Institute).
IN
one
of those articles
in
which, with
the
air of conjurers bringing dead rabbits to life,
economists are wont to demonstrate tri-
umphantly that opinions they have always
known,
Q
priori,
to be correct can be made
to appear to have been discovered by
empirical investigation and supported
by
statistical evidence, a writer in the
Economist
last year’ pointed a scornful finger at the
Colonial Office. The
growth
in the size
of
its staff
“
during a period of Imperial
decline” was, we were assured, evidence
of
‘‘
Parkinson’s law
”
according to which
the rise
in
the total employed, from
372
in
1935
to
1,661
in
1954,
represented
“
auto-
matic stages in an inevitable increase
’’
which
“
has nothing to do with the size-or
even the existence-of the Empire.” With
that distaste for mere historical facts not
uncommon in the discoverers of socio-
logical laws, the author assured
us
too that
since
1947
the colonial territories had
“shrunk steadily from year to year as
successive colonies achieve self-govern-
ment.” In fact the only territory for which
the Colonial Office has shed responsibility
since the Ceylon Independence Act was
passed in
1947
is Palestine.
Sir Charles Jefiies, whose skilfully con-
structed and urbanely written book is
refreshingly free from the somewhat
defensive tone which marred its immediate
predecessor in the
New
Whitehall
Series,
makes no direct reply to such criticisms.
The problems with which the Colonial
Office is concerned are, he explains, of two
kinds
:
“those which arise out of the
dependence of colonial and other terri-
tories
on
the United Kingdom and those
which arise
out
of physical, economic,
or
social conditions having nothing
to
do
with
political status.” Increases in the extent
of
self-government enjoyed by the terri-
tories, short of complete independence,
clearly result in more work on the first
count since the relationship becomes more
The
Economist,
__
l“
Parkinson’s Law
”,
Vol.
177,
pp.
635-637.
complicated and
its
precise implications in
any
proposed course of action affecting the
territory must be carefully considered.
The
“
geographical
”
departments of the
Office (i.e., those dealing with a particular
area), whose responsibility this primarily
is, numbered eight in
1925
and there are
nine to-day. Whereas in
19~5,
however,
they did almost all the work of the Office,
to-day they are a relatively small though
still the most important part of it. The
work of the Legal Division, too, whose
responsibilities include the drafting of
colonial constitutions, has also greatly in-
creased as
a
result of the very factor
emphasised by the
Economist.
The attempt
to regulate many aspects of the social and
economic life of the world by international
action through the specialised agencies,
creates special problems
in
respect of
territories with a large measure of self-
government which are yet not separate
international entities. This, as well as
international preoccupations with ques-
tions of colonial status, has led to the
setting up of an International Relations
Department. But it is, of course, primarily
to the result of developments affecting the
second group of problems that we must
look,
to
account for the greater part of
Colonial Office expansion. This reflects
not only the great increase in our know-
ledge of the scientific and technical prob-
lems of tropical territories, and the
assumption
by
the British government of
responsibility for substantial (though in-
adequate) financial aid to oversea territories
but also, and more fundamentally, the
application
to
them of ideas about the
appropriate scope
of
government action in
promoting development
and
welfare which
have been increasingly dominant in Britain
itself since the early years of this century.
There have been two main consequences
of this change, The first is the employ-
ment of technical and scientific advisory
staff, the use of a wide range of advisory
committees concerned both with general
policy and research, and the development
219
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