For a student of post-colonial Ghanaian politics, such as the present writer, often
struggling to understand quite why economic and political trajectories after
independence proved so disappointing, it is interesting to compare different
perspectives on the last years of colonial rule.
Philip Dennis was appointed to the Colonial Administrative Service in 1939, after
graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, and served in the Gold Coast from 1940 to
1956. Starting as an Assistant District Commissioner at Cape Coast, he proceeded, after
a spell with the Royal West African Erontier Eorce in Nigeria, to serve at Tarkwa,
Sekondi, Kpandu and Kumasi. His work focussed especially on administrative
reorganisation and financial reform of local government and, later, as a Judicial Adviser,
on reforming the system of native courts. His memoirs are a fairly standard example of
this genre. They include some quite acute observations regarding both the local-level
operation of government and, occasionally, developments at the centre. He emphasises,
for example, the obstacles to the effective operation of local government presented by a
lack of financial viability - a point of more than purely historical interest; and he
observes how very out-of-touch with local economic grievances were most central
government officials in 1947-48.
Such observations are never very fully or satisfyingly developed, however, and they
are interspersed with much longer passages dealing with narrowly, even mundanely,
personal and domestic matters and with observations regarding the author's work
colleagues and friends. It would be inappropriate to criticise the book on this score. Such
a balance obviously reflects Mr Dennis' intended readership. But it is somewhat
disconcerting, for an academic certainly, to find himself whisked within the space of a
paragraph from comments on recent administrative reforms to a description of a dinner
party. Even for those whose interest is primarily in the remarks about fellow colonial
personnel, the style of writing will perhaps prove rather frustratingly kaleidoscopic, just
beginning to get interesting when the subject is suddenly switched. And it is difficult to
know, on occasions, whether or not particular comments are meant to be read with an
especially dry sense of humour. Having said this, the memoirs make quite pleasantly
entertaining reading, and Philip Dennis is to be congratulated on his nicely terse writing
style.
It would be quite wrong to suggest that, as regards the decidedly fragmentary
comments on the political developments of the time, the memoirs offer any very penetrating insights or fresh historical material. The author's main contention regarding
decolonisation is one that is likely to be widely shared by ex-colonial officials; that the
main failing of colonial government during this period was the lack of adequate
preparation for self-government, deriving in part from the expectation, up until 1947,
that there would be far more time to implement various reforms than actually proved to
be the case. The general direction of colonial policy is considered to have been, if not
beyond criticism, at least quite sensible and well-intentioned; and Ghanaians and
colonial officials are presented as, on the whole, working together co-operatively and
enjoying very friendly personal relations. "There was remarkably little anti-white feeling
amongst ordinary people", we are told, "although politicians were trying to build it up." Philip Dennis,
like many DCs, possessed a far more accurate understanding of contemporary social and
political realities; and it is one of the weaknesses of the academic study of Africa that it
has been so much more heavily influenced by radical utopianism of the kind represented
by authors like Hodgkin.
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