Chris Jeppesen and Andrew W. M. Smith
The ways in which the future is forecast, when we speak in the conditional, are intimately bound up with our assessment of the present. After the Second World War, when this volume has stressed the notion of a late colonial shift, there was a period of profound change, creating a mass of swirling possibilities in Europe and in Africa. In 1950 Keïta Fodéba described an ‘African dawn’, as the ruptures of wartime and
imperial conflict interrupted the rhythms of village life.1 There was a
sense, for some, that natural forces were undermining empire, but also that they could spark its renewal. For European powers, this late colonial shift offered the chance to reconstruct empire as a modernizing force committed to development and an essential, stabilizing structure within the new constellations of Cold War rivalry. For those living under colonial rule, new claims could be made for economic and political equality, while white settler communities saw the chance to assert a colonial future that might entrench white control in Africa. All the while, for anti- colonial political and intellectual elites, it seemed that a global discourse of rights should secure colonial emancipation.
The conditional assessment of empire was not simply the task of states. Ordinary people, activists, businesses and even historians all imag-
ined their own futures. As demonstrated by Michael Collins in Chapter 1,
these visions were not limited by, or within, bounded spaces or official channels. Instead, they ranged across local, national, imperial and global forums to try and make real the ambitions hoped possible. Removing the definite ending from our imperfect view of the past does not necessitate a counter- factual discussion of flags and federations, but can open a smaller window on a social history of ideas inflected by the context in which they emerged. This volume has sought to stress the uncertainties of the end of
British and French empire in Africa as a means of interrogating the con- tingent nature of the decolonization process. Competing visions of what this change might entail vied throughout the 1950s, and, in turn, cre- ated new openings that promised alternative futures, regardless of their realization. In emphasizing three central themes of development, con- tingency and entanglement, the essays in this collection have sought to tease out how some of those futures were imagined, why some succeeded and why others fell away. As Frederick Cooper notes: ‘Imaginative pro-
jects have material consequences.’2
Colonial development was central to this reimagining. The reshap- ing of colonial societies never unfolded as European planners hoped, however; Africa would not be Europe’s blank slate. Far from revealing the hegemonic, modernizing power of empire, development schemes often exposed the limits of colonial authority and the necessity for negotiation. Development became a field in which competing claims on the future could be made, and, simultaneously, the battleground upon which those visions were resisted. In charting the distance between metropolitan ambitions and local realities, the chapters in this volume suggest fresh insight into how development initiatives contributed to the contingent
ends of empire. In Chapter 2, Charlotte Riley traced debates about aid and
development within the Labour Party from the post- war moment, when policy- makers still imagined a bright colonial future, to the postcolonial world, when development remained central to policy- makers’ vision of progressive engagement with African states. Continuity in personnel and ideas ensured that the transfer of power did not precipitate a fundamen- tal rupture in development policy but that new initiatives often built upon
enduring colonial entanglements. In Chapter 3, Marta Musso looked at
how Algerian oil became a contingent factor at the turbulent end of French empire in North Africa. Throughout the War of Independence a range of actors on both sides, at and below the level of the state, sought to exploit the developmental promise of hydrocarbons to cultivate allies, dominate debates and make deals in pursuit of a vital resource. In both chapters, we see how the promise of future developmental engagement was wholly contingent on ideas of sovereignty defined in the conditional. European powers emphasized developmental entanglements to ensure continued access to markets and resources, while newly independent governments often forfeited sovereign control over territorial resources to preserve economic ties to Europe. Understanding the conditional sense of decolo- nization helps to explain the performative aspect of continued European involvement in Africa. Between aid parcels branded with the Union Jack and ephemeral Saharan oil contracts drawn up by the embattled French
state lies an insight into how the politics of development were contested during the ongoing process of decolonization.
Each aspect of these contests was refracted through the many indi- vidual perspectives that made up the imperial nation state. By looking at the ways in which individual decisions formed amidst the rapidly changing climate of the 1950s, we can begin to cut across those perspec- tives to consider how those living through the ends of empire responded
to the wider changes unfolding around them. In Chapter 4, Andrew
Smith argued that, by understanding the way these visions of the future were shaped by specific moments in the late colonial state, we can bet- ter untangle the ongoing process of decolonization. By placing specific documents within their ideational context, it is possible to look more closely at the ways in which discourse was shaped by the broader entan-
glements that surrounded it, both personal and political. In Chapter 5,
Robert Skinner considered how the concept of human rights took on a new inflection as the process of decolonization accelerated. Skinner showed that the history of human rights, and its strong association with sovereignty, was contingent on the entangled history of decolonization. From Sharpeville to the United Nations, on to West Yorkshire and back to southern Africa, networks of transnational activists emerged from the particularities of local violence. Amidst the breakdown of empire, these networks became essential conduits in mobilizing global opinion against the enduring iniquities of white rule in Africa. In both these chapters, we can see how a dense, interconnected and diverse range of debates shaped and were shaped by the end of European empires and the ongoing pro- cess of decolonization. By tracing the discourse, or studying the moment in which these ideas were framed, we get a sense of how placing decolo- nization in the conditional tense opens new opportunities for analysis.
Focusing on these moments and on these discussions means looking at the messy ways in which formal empires split apart. From this, we gain a pronounced sense of the complex mental and mate-
rial entanglements that survived flag independence. In Chapter 6,
Chris Jeppesen looked at changing ideas of service and duty in the late colonial state. The Colonial Service’s recruitment crisis in the 1950s exposed the irreconcilable tensions between its traditional institutional ethos and the new priorities of the revised colonial mis- sion. As careers in empire lost their popular appeal, new organiza- tions, such as VSO, offered alternative opportunities for service and adventure overseas. The links between the two organizations empha- sized the ways in which this was a future imagined on the basis of a changing relationship between Britain and colonial territories, but
one that sought to emphasize the constant of duty amidst a turbulent climate. The porosity of colonial borders ensured that entanglements existed not only between ‘metropole’ and ‘colony’ but between empires themselves, despite the best efforts of cartographers to demarcate
European empires as discrete territorial units. In Chapter 7, Joanna
Warson charted the dense networks of labour, kinship and trade that crossed colonial borders and imperilled imperial sovereignty. Labour migrancy between anglophone and francophone West Africa exposed the insecurities of flagging empires and highlighted the limited ability of the late colonial state to impose control on the actions of indigenous people. Looking at how colonial administrators sought to untangle these links shows how they themselves imagined the future of African development and projected French influence forwards. Both these chapters captured the late colonial state as a contested space in which the ‘official mind’ sought to impose control on the turbulent currents starting to erode colonial authority. Exploring these often futile efforts reveals the internal contradictions that stood at the heart of Britain and France’s revised colonial missions. The desire to impose a vision of a consensual and ongoing colonial future through often frenzied plan- ning belied the limits of colonial control in the everyday lives of many indigenous people. Yet this planning also made possible unexpected, though enduring, entanglements between newly independent states and postcolonial powers.
The contradictions of decolonization need not hinder its discus- sion, nor limit our frames of analysis. In looking at the three key themes of this volume – development, contingency and entanglement – it is clear that they overlap and intersect as analytical categories. This is a productive tension for understanding the ways in which imperial lega- cies lingered and systemic inequality persisted, even as new languages of liberation found an ever greater audience. The force of the future imperfect lies in its conditionality, and, in trying to rescue that sense of the conditional, the entanglements of the late colonial state gain traction. In this space delimited by time instead of place, we can gain an insight into the importance of the post- war moment as a period in which processes of change were accelerated, and perceptions of the future recast. Exploring visions of the future can open up a sense of the late colonial shift as it occurred, privileging an anti- teleological reading of these transformative decades. By seeking to untangle the asymmetric interactions of individual actors, larger global networks and specific governments, the link between imagining and acting the end of empire becomes clearer. Using the conditional as a category,
we can begin to unpick the developmental, contingent and entangled threads of the imperial nation state as it planned imaginative projects in Europe and Africa.
By 1965 Keïta Fodéba envisaged a ‘new dawn of African freedom’; winds had seemingly calmed and tides ebbed, leaving behind only the crumbled remnants of Britain and France’s African empires. As this volume has sought to explore, however, decolonization was never an irresistible force of nature but a contested, uncertain and contingent to- and- fro, which unfolded in the conditional and left entangled pasts to shape future possibilities. Bright though Fodéba’s new dawn seemed in the mid- 1960s, it should not blind us to the blurred alternatives glimpsed in the twilight of empire.