by John H. Smith, CBE
(Administrative Officer, Nigeria 1951-70)
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Recent articles in the Overseas Pensioner have challenged anti-colonial
comments particularly by the BBC and The Times. Colonial memoirs
usually face up to the criticisms levelled against us and Harry Mitchell's
Confessions of a Briefless Barrister has a whole chapter
devoted to the defence of Britain's imperial record. He criticises Tim
Butcher, more for Blood River about the Congo than for Chasing the Devil,
his account of Sierra Leone, where Mitchell began his career. Mitchell's
concern is that Butcher blames colonialism for the mess he found in the
Congo some fifty years later and effectively quotes a Malaysian UN officer
who argued that Malaysia had done extremely well since independence
despite colonial rule. Neither Butcher nor the Malaysian accepted that
British rule and preparation for independence was any better than
Belgium's. Another target is the BBC's comment in a documentary about
Livingstone suggesting that his exploration encouraged the "Scramble for
Africa", thereby creating exploitation 'every bit as shameful as the slave
trade'. Mitchell's efforts to engage the BBC in constructive discussion
failed, an experience shared by OSPA.
We learn about a less expected defender in Professor Gilbey's Chinua
Achebe on the Positive Legacy of Colonialism, in African Affairs, October
2016. Gilbey points out that Achebe, although a key figure in the rise and
persistence of anti-colonial ideology in Africa, made a clear statement in his
final work There was a Country about the positive legacies of colonialism
and was never the simple anti-colonial figure most assumed, welcoming in
particular the educational opportunities he enjoyed. Achebe, as a young
man, seemed to those of us who knew him to be a model of the
development and modernisation that we hoped latter-day colonialism would
bring. After an English style secondary education, Achebe was an early
graduate of Ibadan, Nigeria's first university, carefully nurtured by the
University of London. Soon writing well-constructed novels in beautiful
English, he became one of the most popular novelists of the second half of
the Twentieth Century worldwide. He was certainly a nationalist, particularly
irritated by Joyce Gary's African novels, writing about his country with
exceptional observation and understanding, the impact upon it of
colonialism - Things Fall Apart - and the impact upon its peoples of
participation in the modern world - No Longer at Ease and Man of the People. He was also an Igbo, the Nigerian people whose culture and
demographic pressures perhaps best prepared them to exploit the
challenges and opportunities colonialism offered. Things certainly didn't fall
apart in the Northern Emirates where Indirect rule ossified tradition and
kept western education at bay.
Gilbey demonstrates how Achebe's popularity, turning him into something
of a literary industry, resulted in admirers blaming every fault and flaw on
colonialism despite Achebe acknowledging local faults and failures.
Achebe was essentially a fair minded critic of colonialism of which he could
never approve but in which he could see some advantages, just as,
although an Igbo and loyal to Biafra during the civil war, he remained more
a Nigerian than a Biafran.
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