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Some time ago I was talking to an African who had
held a post in colonial times in a District which I had
once administered. After independence he himself had
been placed in charge of the same area.
I asked him if he considered such men as myself to
have been imperialistic in our administrative attitudes.
No, he answered, certainly not. We had been far too
busy with day to day affairs, too fully stretched by local
problems -- as he had been, also.
Dr. Heussler, with his specialised interest in the study
of imperialism, might have found this reply worthy of
comment, particularly in relation to his latest book
which exhibits imperialists at work, because they
emerge refreshingly free from any pejorative interpretation
of the word -- and for the same reason.
Dr. Heussler's earlier books have not left him
unscathed by other scholars who have accused him of a
partiality towards his main subjects which sometimes
transforms geese into swans and blinkers him to their
political imperfections. If it is culpable to write a study
of administration which concentrates more on persons
than policies, then his latest book may expect some
buffets. But academic circles will not deny his claim
that there is a growing scholarly interest in the
historical role of Europeans in other parts of the world
and that the production of close, precise monographs
is a safeguard against generalizations without sufficient
evidence.
In non-academic circles, at least, there will be
gratitude to an American scholar who deploys so
powerful a body of evidence to show that the men in
the Districts did not sit and wait for policies to
descend upon them from above but on their own
initiative set about the jobs that wanted doing. "...In
much of the work that District Officers initiated or
pursued on their own, the views they entertained of
native rights and of what kind of society should be
aimed at tended to remain implicit, unvoiced or
unexplained, even to oneself. Often things were done
from reasons that sprang from an officer's personal
interests combined with opportunities peculiar to the
District where he found himself. . . . there was the
Golden Rule, true enough: 'Thou shalt collect thy
tax, thou shalt not worry thy Government'. Everyone
got the same circulars from Dar Es Salaam and filled
up the same returns . . . . but with routine satisfied,
one's attention was inevitably drawn to the limitless
potential for agricultural and other development that
every part of the country provided..."
This book makes no pretentious claims. It is, as it
declares itself to be, simply an account on District
Administration. Dr. Heussler pleads no causes and
judges no issues. With great patience and months of
hard work, by evidence culled from scores of
documents in Britain and Tanzania and by a multitude
of personal contacts, he has set out to show what the field administrator did, what motivated him and what
were some of the conditions under which he worked.
He corrects,
however, the not uncommon impression that all
Colonial Service officers were pressed from the same
mould. His book makes its point without argument:
British colonial history cannot be divorced from the
individualism of those who were concerned with
administration in practice rather than in theory.
It is impossible for those who were not part of the
Colonial Service to understand the mystique it had for
its members. Readers of Dr. Heussler's small book, and
especially those who met him during its preparation,
will feel with pleasure and respect
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