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ABSTRACT
This article takes the formation and work of the ‘Elliot’ Commission on Higher Education in West Africa (1943–45) to reconsider the roots of British colonial development. Late colonial universities were major development projects, although they have rarely been considered as such. Focusing particularly on the Nigerian experience and the controversy over Yaba Higher College (founded 1934), the article contends that late colonial plans for universities were not produced in Britain and then exported to West African colonies. Rather, they were formed through interactions between agendas and ideas with roots in West Africa, Britain and elsewhere. These debates exhibited asymmetries of power but produced some consensus about university development. African and British actors conceptualised modern education by combining their local concerns with a variety of supra-local geographical frames for development, which included the British Empire and the individual colony. The British Empire did not in this case forestall development, but shaped the ways in which development was conceived.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ruth Craggs, Mufutau Oluwasegun Jimoh, Hilary Sapire, Frank Trentmann, Daphna Vardi Howe and the anonymous readers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful to seminar audiences at Columbia University and the University of Exeter for their questions, and to library and archive staff in Ibadan, Durham and London for their invaluable assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Standard accounts include Morgan, Colonial Development; Lee and Petter, Colonial Office; Pearce, Turning Point; Constantine, Colonial Development Policy; Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development.
2 On contemporary capacity building, see, for example, Harris, ‘Building Scientific Capacity’, 7.
3 Adesina, ‘Future of the Past’, 47–50. Other recent contributions include Adriansen, Madsen and Jensen, eds, Higher Education and Capacity Building; Koehn and Obamba, Transnationally Partnered University.
4 James Duff, ‘Memoir of Visit to Africa’, n.d., Papers of Sir James Fitzjames Duff, DUF 3B/136, Durham University Library Special Collections.
5 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, 74, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA). For a critique of this arrangement, see Ajayi, Goma and Johnson, African Experience, 55–59, 67–69.
6 Low and Lonsdale, ‘Introduction’, 14–15, 53–54.
7 Anderson, Eroding the Commons, 6.
8 Mellanby, Birth of Nigeria’s University; Carr-Saunders, New Universities Overseas; Maxwell, Universities in Partnership.
9 Adewoye, ‘The Antecedents’, 17–21; Fafunwa, Nigerian Higher Education, 4–5; Okafor, Development of Universities, 87–93.
10 Nwauwa, Imperialism, Academe, 116, also see 160.
11 See, for example, Ajayi, ‘Secondary Grammar School Education’; Peel, ‘Olaju’.
12 For example, on postcolonialism, see Chakrabarty, Provincialising Europe; on globalisation, Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History; on networks, Lester, Imperial Networks.
13 van Beusekom, Negotiating Development; Hodge, Triumph of the Expert; Tischler, Light and Power.
14 See Eisenstadt, ‘Multiple Modernities’, 1–3; Allman, ‘Fashioning Africa’, 1–10.
15 Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity, 14–15; Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 115.
16 See, for example, Gilroy, Black Atlantic.
17 For a similar argument, see Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 4.
18 Táíwò, How Colonialism Preempted Modernity, 10–15.
19 Achebe, British-Protected Child, 21. On the schedule of the Elliot Commission in Nigeria, see Chief Secretary to Provincial Secretaries, 8 Feb. 1944, CSO26 41978, vol. 2, National Archive, Ibadan.
20 Everill, Abolition and Empire, 18–19.
21 Systems of orally transmitted knowledge and institutions of Islamic education were already well established in West Africa. Okafor, Development of Universities, 2.
22 McCaskie, ‘Cultural Encounters’, 168–72; Illife, Honour in African History, 246–54.
23 Zachernuk, Colonial Subjects, 27–33, 42–45; Echeruo, Victorian Lagos, 109–12.
24 Wilk, Home Cooking, 70.
25 Ajayi, ‘Secondary Grammar School Education’, 534–35.
26 Peel, ‘Olaju’, 140, 147–51.
27 Falola and Heaton, History of Nigeria, 110–16.
28 National Congress of British West Africa, ‘Resolutions of the Conference of Africans of British West Africa held at Accra, Gold Coast, from 11th to 29th March, 1920’, transcribed in Ashby, Universities, 474–5, quotation at 474.
29 Seth, Subject Lessons, 160–62; Ashby, Universities, 142–43.
30 Hodge, Triumph of the Expert, 129–43.
31 Nigeria, Annual Reports on the Education Departments, part 2, 23.
32 Ogunlade, ‘Education and Politics’, 340–42.
33 Adi, West Africans, 32–46.
34 Although this article focuses on southern Nigeria, new institutions of higher learning were also established in the north in the 1930s. They included Katsina Higher College and Kano Law School. The latter, more enduring, institution sought to modernise Islamic education. Tibenderana, Education and Cultural Change, 106–111; Fafunwa, History of Education, 209–10.
35 Nigerian government revenue in 1928 was £9.5m. It had declined to £7.6m by 1934. See Shenton, Development of Capitalism, 101–03; Hopkins, Economic History, 260–67.
36 Hussey, Tropical Africa, 91–93.
37 ‘Speech made by the Governor’, 19 Jan. 1934, CO 583/197/4, TNA.
38 Ogunlade, ‘Yaba Higher College’, 83.
39 The rally became a milestone in nationalist history. It was seen retrospectively as the first meeting of the Lagos Youth Movement, the pioneering nationalist organisation later renamed the Nigerian Youth Movement. Coleman, Nigeria, 218.
40 Legislative Council Minutes, 10 July 1939, CSO26 24121 vol. 3, National Archive, Ibadan.
41 This is clear, for example, in the discussions of the West African Students’ Union. See Zachernuk, Colonial Subjects, 119. See also the discussion of issues including the Yoruba language in the magazine WASU (Dec. 1937).
42 Azikiwe, Renascent Africa, 17–18; see also Tonkin, ‘Zik’s Story’, 35–36, 39.
43 Fafunwa, Nigerian Higher Education, 32–54; Okafor, Development of Universities, 79; Haynes, ‘Persistence of Privilege’, 223.
44 Board of Advisers Minutes, 29 Jan. 1935, 12 June 1935, 7 Jan. 1936, file 99A, Yaba Papers, Africana Collection, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
45 Bourdillon to Secretary of State, 7 Oct. 1937, CO 583/217/5, TNA.
46 Thorp's undated reply to Duckworth's Memorandum of 14 June 1939, CO 583/257/6, TNA.
47 Ejiwunmi, Full Colours, 12.
48 Duckworth to Chief Secretary, 31 March 1941, CO 583/257/6, TNA.
49 West African Governors’ Conference Minutes, Aug. 1939, CSO26 24121 Vol. IV, National Archive, Ibadan.
50 Ashton and Stockwell, ‘Introduction’, lxvi, lxxxv; Hopkins, Economic History, 256–58.
51 Constantine, Colonial Development Policy, 244–46; Wolton, Lord Hailey, 94–112.
52 Lee and Petter, Colonial Office, 16, 148–49.
53 See, for example, ‘A Plan for Britain’, a special issue of Picture Post (4 Jan. 1941). Huxley was a contributor.
54 ‘ACEC 32/40. Higher Education in West Africa. Report of the Sub–Committee on the Recommendations of the Governors’ Conference’, 4 Dec. 1940, CSO26 41978 Vol. I, 4, 8, 11–12, National Archive, Ibadan.
55 Adi, West Africans, 96–98.
56 Borsali, ‘British Colonial Policy’, 185.
57 ‘ACEC 7/43. Advisory committee on education in the colonies report of the sub-committee on higher education’, transcribed in Ashby, Universities, 492–524, quotations at 495, 502.
58 Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 391 (1943), col. 52.
59 Ashton and Stockwell, ‘Introduction’, lxxx. Other accounts that stress the Asquith Commission include Nwauwa, Imperialism, Academe, 134–56; Ashby, Universities, 212–20.
60 See, for example ‘Higher Education. Interim Report of the Sub-Committee’, presented to the ACEC 25 March 1943, CO 987/1; ‘Report of the Sub-Committee on Higher Education’, 15 May 1943, CO 885/106, TNA.
61 Stanley to West African Governors, 12 May 1943, CSO26 41978, vol. 1, National Archive, Ibadan.
62 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, ii, TNA. Further study of the contribution of Eveline Martin and Margaret Read would be of interest. I have not been able to locate their personal papers relating to the commission.
63 Stanley to West African Governors, 12 May 1943, CSO26 41978, vol. 1, National Archive, Ibadan.
64 Officer Administering Government, Accra to Governor of Nigeria, 7 Dec. 1943, Governor of Sierra Leone to Governor of Nigeria, 7 Dec. 1943, CSO26 41978, vol. 2, National Archive, Ibadan.
65 Borsali, ‘British Colonial Policy’, 186.
66 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, vi, TNA; Elliot Commission Minutes, 10 Dec. 1943, box 23, Kuti Papers, Africana Collection, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
67 On government commissions as performance, see Ashforth, Politics of Official Discourse, 7–8.
68 Flint, ‘Managing Nationalism’, 155.
69 ‘First Draft Chapter VI’, n.d. [1944], box 24, Africana Collection, Kuti Papers, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
70 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, 96, TNA.
71 Ibid., 91.
72 ‘Second Draft Chapter VII’, n.d. [1944], box 24, Kuti Papers, Africana Collection, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
73 ‘Amendments to the Second Draft of Chapters VI and VII (Medical Education and Agriculture, Forestry and Animal Health) put forward by the African members of the Commission’, n.d. [1944], box 24, Kuti Papers, Africana Collection, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
74 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, 108, TNA.
75 Whitehead, ‘Establishment of University Education’, 123–31; Nwauwa, Imperialism, Academe, 163–65.
76 Nwauwa, Imperialism, Academe, 129.
77 Duff to Cox, 9 April 1945, Durham University Records, UND/CCI/C6, Durham University Library Special Collections.
78 Truman to Duff, 8 Sept. 1944, Durham University Records, UND/CCI/C6, Durham University Library Special Collections.
79 Mouat Jones to Duff, 21 June 1945, Duff Papers, DUF 3E/91, University of Durham Library Special Collections.
80 Duff to Mouat Jones, 5 July 1944, Durham University Records, UND/CCI/C6, Durham University Library Special Collections.
81 Both the minority and majority reports agreed that the Nigerian university should be located in the south-western city of Ibadan. It was perceived to have more space than Lagos for a large university campus, was already home to a school of agriculture, and had a large population that would benefit from the university's teaching hospital. Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, 65, TNA; University College Ibadan, University College Ibadan Report, 3.
82 Borsali stressed potential student numbers and the level of training needed for Africans involved in development projects. Borsali, ‘British Colonial Policy’, 100. Nwauwa at times suggested the split was over how far colonial reform should go, and at others stressed quality and standards. Nwauwa, Imperialism, Academe, 121. For Ashby, the key issue was standards. Ashby, Universities, 219–20.
83 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, 60, TNA.
84 ‘Minutes of Meeting between Drafting Sub Committee of the Asquith Commission and Five Members of the Elliot Commission’, 13 Oct. 1944, box 23, Kuti Papers, Africana Collection, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
85 Minutes of Meeting between Drafting Sub Committee of the Asquith Commission and Five Members of the Elliot Commission’, 13 Oct. 1944, box 23, Kuti Papers, Africana Collection, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.
86 Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, 1945, Cmd. 6655, 146, TNA.
87 Ibid., 18.
88 Achebe, British-Protected Child, 22.