Second Colonial Occupation

The second colonial occupation is a term coined by the historians Anthony Low and John Lonsdale to describe a period of European colonial rule in Africa after World War II. It originated in an article about Britain's East African colonies in the edited volume History of East Africa (1976), but has subsequently been used by other historians in other contexts, though it is usually found only in African history.

Concept

According to Low and Lonsdale, the "second colonial occupation" represented a distinct period in British colonial rule which began after World War II, running approximately from 1945 to 1963 and followed an earlier "occupation" that had begun and ended in the era of New Imperialism.^[1] In their original 1976 article, they wrote:

From the late 1940s there was a great intensification of government activity throughout British Africa; in contrast to earlier years, and to the recent war period when territories were drained of staff, this access of official energy amounted to a second colonial occupation. It had a variety of causes.^[2]

They contrasted this with previous attempts by colonial powers after World War I and the Great Depression to minimise the financial cost of imperial rule through aggressive economic extraction and by delegating authority to indigenous rulers through the policy of indirect rule. The United Kingdom had accumulated large debts to the United States during the war and attempted to reduce its foreign-currency imports in following years. As a result, it was hoped that colonial agricultural produce could replace products previously acquired overseas. This would involve a restructuring of African economies "in the interests of the British consumer", a process which would require greater investment in terms of manpower and investment.^[3] Large numbers of European experts, such as agronomists, were recruited to improve African agricultural processes and the state invested in large planned economic projects such as the Tanganyika groundnut scheme (1947–52). This led to unprecedented state interference in the day-to-day lives of the colonial population, especially peasants, helping to drive the emergence of popular African anti-colonial nationalism.

World War II or the Colonial Development and Welfare Act 1940 are often cited as a turning point in this process.^[4] It has been argued that there was a continuity between the ethos of the second colonial occupation and the post-colonial focus on economic development.^[5]

References

Bibliography

• Utietiang Ukelina, Bekeh (2017). The Second Colonial Occupation: Development Planning, Agriculture, and the Legacies of British Colonial Rule in Nigeria. Lanham: Lexington Books. ISBN 9781498529242. 
• Low, D.A.; Lonsdale, J.M. (1991). "East Africa: Towards a New Order, 1945-1963". Eclipse of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511563096.  (reprint of the 1976 article)

Further reading

• Low, D.A.; Lonsdale, J.M., eds (1976). "Towards the New Order, 1945–63". History of East Africa. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

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