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International Organization For Colonial Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Annette Baker Fox
Annette Baker Fox
Affiliation:
Yale Institute of International Studies
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Extract

The contrast between brave American words in support of colonial aspirations and United States military aid in support of colonial powers putting down native insurrection is painfully sharp. Checking the spread of Soviet imperialism and liquidating the remnants of old-style European imperialism are objectives which seem to stand in the way of each other. Military security can apparently be purchased only at the price of popular hostility in the colonial world. And friendship may prove unpurchasable at any price.

Foreign policy making always involves a reconciliation of not wholly compatible goals, but the dilemma which United States colonial policy poses in Asia is peculiarly distasteful. What we face there today we might tomorrow face in Africa or the Pacific islands. Some action has to be improvised in the Far East at once. But this crisis also requires the United States to remove the conditions which will present similar predicaments elsewhere in the future.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , April 1951 , pp. 340 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1951

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References

1 The territories of which this paper treats are those around the globe which are constitutionally as well as economically dependent. “Non-self-governing territories” as used here will include those lacking the legal power to make their major governmental decisions alone. This will distinguish a colony such as Malaya from the formally independent Burma. It will exclude such a country as Southern Rhodesia, which in almost every respect but name is now a dominion, but not such territories as some of the French and Dutch dependencies (e.g., New Caledonia and Surinam) which have been formally renamed, but which lack sufficient powers to be called self-governing.

2 In recent years the idea of colonial development has broadened greatly from meaning merely the exploitation of the resources in the colonies by metropolitan business enterprises. It now involves the most economical use of colonial resources by public as well as private means, a sharply increased standard of living for the colonial peoples, and constitutional reforms for the progressive expansion of their power to govern themselves.

3 Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice, Cambridge, England, 1948, p. 470.Google Scholar

4 Thus, there are some problems, such as a colonial people's distrust of the metropolitan government, that do not seem amenable to any kind of international action for their solution. If some of the participants have special interests incompatible with the welfare of the colonial peoples—as in the case of the Soviet bloc—their presence forecloses the possibility of genuine cooperation. What may work in a very backward area is not necessarily suited to advanced colonies. Finally, certain forms of action are likely to be ineffective when applied under adverse conditions, as when the metropolitan government is close to bankruptcy.

5 Other matters frequently considered are education and health, minority rights, royalties, trade unions, fiscal policy, communications, and industrialization.

6 In 1951 it made a new departure when it decided to conduct a special study of rural development, emphasizing variations in patterns of land utilization and land tenure.

7 Cf. Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, International Labour Conference, 33rd session, Geneva, 1950, esp. p. 8.

8 For one example, see State Department Bulletin, March 20, 1950, p. 447.

9 The visiting missions are especially valuable for this function, as demonstrated by the difference in performance of, and reaction to, the first and second missions to East and West Africa.

10 United Nations document T/SR. 250 (March 9, 1950).

A similar function was performed by the Food and Agriculture Organization in providing outside expert confirmation that the threatened extinction of the Gold Coast cocoa industry by the swollen shoot disease could only be met by wholesale cutting out of affected trees. It thus facilitated the execution of a policy previously thwarted by the uncooperative attitude of the suspicious native planters.

11 The South Pacific Commission's membership includes Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands; prompted by the first two states, they established this agency for economic and social cooperation among their Pacific territories south of the equator.

12 In the Caribbean, where the peoples concerned are approaching self-government, they also serve on the Commission itself and in the secretariat, and they participate in technical meetings sponsored by the Commission.

13 Other publications include the “Crop Inquiry Series,” trade bulletins, an information bulletin written in simple style for wide distribution in the area, and a monthly magazine containing news of the Commission, individual territories, the metropolitan governments' activities related to the colonies, international organizations, and special articles on subjects of concern to the Commission territories. Among the special studies sponsored by the Caribbean Commission are the “unknown disease” of cocoanuts, industrialization prospects in the Caribbean, and the utilization of sugar by-products. The Commission answers specific requests for information, and the secretariat has drawn up a panel of experts which the territories may consult on special problems. It is also building up an educational film library for use by the Commission territories. Under Caribbean Commission auspices a number of technicians in special fields in the Caribbean have come together to discuss such subjects as livestock improvement and soil use and conservation.

Among the research projects being conducted by the South Pacific Commission are a filariasis survey, introduction of new economic plants, establishment of centralized technical training institutions, and a scheme for community development under trained native leadership.

14 Unlike the other two regional commissions, the CCTA does not provide for associating the native peoples with the commission's work. The membership includes Great Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal (not a member of the United Nations), South Africa, and the semi-dominion of Southern Rhodesia.

15 Cf. British Colonial Office, Reference Section, Memorandum No. 20 (revised March 1950), “Notes on International Colonial Cooperation” (mimeo.).

16 For example, UNESCO's interest in promoting mass education of relatively primitive communities (sometimes called fundamental education) extends to the dependencies; and Great Britain, for one, has asked its assistance in Africa.

17 Some kinds of technical assistance are of little avail without capital and equipment. International organization is apparently an unpromising source of such aid, judging by the abortive loan negotiations between the International Bank and the British government's Colonial Development Corporation. In order to safeguard its investment the Bank required extensive reports which the Corporation regarded as “too onerous”; for this reason the Corporation withdrew a request for aid in Africa. (New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 4, 1950.) The ECA has proved a far more effective agency for influencing colonial development through the provision of capital and equipment.

18 Although the ECA is not an international organization it did base part of its colonial program on studies of an Overseas Territories Committee of the Organizaxstion for European Economic Cooperation, which paid special attention to the problems of coordination. Illustrative of the beneficial effects is the ECA-aided project for improving the Portuguese East African port of Beira. Through the cooperation of Portugal and Great Britain this project will provide an important outlet to the sea not only for Mozambique but for several British territories in East Africa.

19 This is the first time since their separation that American Samoa and its neighbor, Western Samoa, a New Zealand trust territory, have been associated for development purposes. The same is true of the Dutch and Australian territories in New Guinea. (Indeed, even the Australian colony of Papua and the trust territory of New Guinea were not associated until recently, and then against the wishes of some Trusteeship Council members.)

20 The American interest was indicated in a previous section.

21 They do not, of course, enter into the regional colonial commissions.

22 Some, like India and Egypt, are settling old scores with the United Kingdom. Similarly, pan-Arab nationalism lies behind many attacks on the French colonial record. The aggressive attitude toward the British taken by the Philippines appears to be a feeling out of the limits of its new international voice.

23 The General Assembly resolution asking that the United Nations flag be flown in trust territories next to the flag of the administering authority illustrates the small powers' tendency to increase their influence in symbolic fashion. To carry out this notion would have no demonstrably desirable effect upon the advancement of the colonial peoples; it only confused the issue and unnecessarily antagonized the administering authorities. The flood of petitions received by the Trusteeship Council from people in the trust territories leaves no doubt that they are already well aware of their special status.

24 “Non-administering authorities” is practically synonymous with small powers in the Trusteeship Council. Since its beginning they have included Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Philippines (not now members), China, Iraq, Argentina, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic. Russia is the only exception, and it is also the only European non-administering member.

25 Illustrative of the Trusteeship Council's slant was its treatment of the many petitions from African trust territories begging for more educational facilities beyond the primary grades. When this demand has been pressed upon the United Kingdom it has replied that the desire was superficial, that existing facilities more than took care of the number of qualified applicants, and that the local population was unwilling to undergo the necessary sacrifice and work to take advantage of further education. Here the matter rested, for the critics on the Trusteeship Council merely denied these allegations without asking the further question, how can a genuine demand for more education be created?

26 Non-United Nations organizations like the Caribbean Commission also reveal these tendencies. In a sense they are a sign of vigor and imagination, but in the case of the Caribbean Commission the members and colonial peoples represented in the West Indian Conference have shown a self-regulating ability to limit their activities to the obviously practical and to those closely related to their general purpose.

27 The prosaic activities of the regional colonial commissions do not appear to arouse any significant interest—negative or positive—among domestic groups in the mother countries.

28 The British have specifically resented the accusatory approach employed by two or three countries, which they liken to being called to the bar to answer for some crime. It is certainly not friendly interrogation about matters of mutual concern.

29 A brake on the usefulness for colonial development of a body like the Trusteeship Council is the emphasis on formal voting. By constantly taking its own temperature to discover the heat generated by internal antagonisms the organization may increase the symptoms of conflict and hinder the growth of consensus. In such a complicated field as colonial administration, progress is unlikely to result from registering a majority vote on a controversial subject.

30 For example, Australia (which has generally favored international supervision) has asked for suggestions on how to plan for the future of the inhabitants of Nauru when the phosphate deposits become exhausted. On another occasion it received some advice from an experienced friendly country, which outside an international organization would hardly have offered to counsel it in this field. The British member urged that the embryonic system of local government being inaugurated in Australian New Guinea be expanded to give the inhabitants some control over the village treasury in order to make the lesson in self-government effective.

31 The argument that the Caribbean Commission has not actually done anything simply registers the fact that it is not an operating agency empowered to execute multi-national development programs. Concrete projects are a national responsibility, but they can be greatly facilitated by the kind of background which the Caribbean Commission is helping to create.

32 However, the Trusteeship Council's experience in dealing with charges of forced labor in the French trust territories in Africa indicates that a definitive judgment on such a matter is very hard to make.

33 Thu9 Australia has steadily held that it was not obligated to consult the Trusteeship Council before deciding upon an administrative union of New Guinea and Papua (although it did in fact provide information about its plans prior to establishing the union).

34 For example, services requiring international cooperation like the standardization of statistics and the guidance of migrants to areas needing additional population.

35 Nor is the effectiveness of the regional commission diluted by the huge size and complicated organization of the United Nations, where coordination has become as important as the substantive problem to be dealt with.

36 To a limited extent, representatives from the colonies have also participated in the work of some United Nations specialized agencies, in the United Nations Secretariat, and as advisers to the national delegations to the United Nations, notably the British.

37 Even the United Nations does not touch the Spanish or Portuguese colonies, which are known to be less progressively administered than are the other dependencies.