Here are two books that will, despite their focus on
Tanganyikan administration, have a far wider interest
than for Tanganyikans only. One is a biographical
sketch of Sir Donald Cameron, Governor of
Tanganyika 1925-31 and of Nigeria 1931-35. The
other is a retrospective account of the work of a District
Commissioner in Tanganyika between 1923 and 1944,
much of it reminiscent of and applicable to an
administrator's life anywhere in inter-war Africa.
Co-incidentally, both these men went to school in
Dublin, an exception (for what it is worth) to the
colonial rule of an administrator's educational history.
Cameron was, along with Clifford and Guggisberg,
among the greatest of the colonial governors of that
inter-war period. Like very few others, he became
governor of an East and a West African territory in
turn. Yet we have less written about Cameron than
about many a lesser gubernatorial light and far less
than his reputation as an outstanding administrator
merits. His own curious account of his two
governorships My Tanganyika Service and Some Nigeria, makes sense only if you already know quite
a lot about the man and his work.
Faced with the problem of discovering no personal
papers. Professor Harry Gailey (a professor of history
in California and author of a number of books on
African history, including a study of the Aba riots)
has done his best to give us an idea of Cameron's total
administrative achievement. Readers
will be interested -- and, this reviewer hopes, suitably
enthused -- by the way Professor Gailey has found so
much of value in the reminiscences of former members
of the Tanganyikan administration (notably the late
Anthony Sillery) who had
worked with Cameron. He has also consulted what
documentary records he could find in Britain. The
result is certainly worth reading, even if it has to
leave a lot unanswered.
If Sir Donald Cameron does not really come alive in
these pages, then the fault may be as much that of his
taciturn self as of his brave biographer's. Maybe only
those who had the privilege of meeting Cameron (few
would claim to have known him) could recognise and
reproduce the stamp of his brilliant brain and his
mordant wit -- and his forthright mind which he
seldom hesitated to speak.
E. K. Lumley has all the advantages denied to
Professor Gailey. His are the reminiscences of a living
man, not an attempt to recall a dead one. All his
sources are there: his own life. There can be nothing
second-hand here. Based on a diary (and once again,
this reviewer hopes the example may remind members
who did not respond to the appeals of the 1960s’ that
their own diaries will be welcomed in the Colonial
Records Project archive at Rhodes House) kept on and
off throughout his 21 years in Tanganyika, Forgotten
Mandate is a straightforward story of grassroots
African administrators, warts and all. Indeed, the warts
are so prominent that one wonders what would have
been the effect on the recruitment of District Officers
by the CO had the book appeared before the demise
of that remarkable breed. For instance, commenting on
the suicide of two DCs’, Lumley estimates that between
1939 and 1945 Tanganyika lost 20% of its administrative
cadre through death and illness. Nor would the
sketches of some of his superior officers have
endeared the caste to would-be cadets! Early on in his
vicissitudinous career Lumley learned an important
lesson of survival: never report too much to headquarters.
Refreshingly, Lumley was not, by his own admission,
one of the high-flyers of the Service (“ I am sorry to
have to send Lumley to you” was Dar-es-Salaam’s
apology to the Provincial Commissioner as new
postings came into effect). All too frequently he was in
hot water with his superiors, sometimes on account of
the noblest of intentions. His rationalisation of his
writing is a valid one: while books on colonial policy
abound, in terms of field administration far less has
been written. For often it was the DC, the man “ at the
point of contact”, on whom the success or failure of
policy depended. His performance could constitute the
yardstick by which the colonial presence and policy
were judged. Any contribution towards setting that
record straight is to be welcomed. Here is one man’s
account, unpretentiously told and well worth the
telling.
Both these books deserve to be read as closely by
those who know Tanganyika “and some Nigeria” as
they will undoubtedly be by everyone seriously
interested in the history of the British Colonial Service.
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