14 - The new colonialism

Summary

The Second World War transformed Tanganyika's relationship with Britain. With an exhausted economy, colossal debts, and a disintegrating Asian empire, Britain at last needed even Tanganyika's meagre resources, if they could be extracted. The post-war decade therefore saw a ‘second colonial occupation’ embodied in development planning and secondary industry, cash-crop expansion and agricultural improvement schemes, educational advance, constitutional progress, and local government reform. Yet as in earlier colonial empires, increased imperial control antagonised subjects who had often acquiesced in lighter suzerainty. Active government created grievances to stimulate political activity and provided resources to make it effective. The new colonialism followed nearly twenty years of crisis, and although in the short term it checked African political development, in the long term it only accentuated the crisis, widening regional and social disparities, reinforcing the structural contradictions of colonial society rather than bringing structural change, and intensifying the process of uneven and combined development. Moreover, the new colonialism contained a contradiction, for while some expected it to restore Britain's power, others saw it as a means of creating friendly successor states. The balance between the views remains uncertain, however, for records are often closed after 1945 and we know progressively less about Tanganyika's history as we approach the present.