The turning point in urban policy for british colonial Africa, 1939-1945

More than two decades ago, R.D. Pearce argued that the years 1938-48 marked a turning point in British policy towards its colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. Until then, he pointed out, administrators believed that they were trustees and that an “African society had to be safeguarded rather than developed”.1 Within a decade the British Government had become convinced that only wholesale development could secure social peace and lay the groundwork for self-government which, it was still generally assumed, lay in a comfortably distant future. Pearce claimed that the most important step came in 1947 with the proposed introduction of English-style local government, but neither he, nor any later writer, has explored the change in urban policy with which this step was implicitly associated. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the causes and dimensions of this change in the way that emerging African cities were viewed from London.