COLONIAL CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

An Interdisciplinary Research Project on British and French Policies and Discourses, 1920-1960

University of Vienna, Department of African Studies/Project International Development

The project scrutinises concepts of development during the late colonial era by analysing French and British discourses on colonial development. It concentrates on the period from the end of World War I to decolonisation as well as on Senegal and Tanganyika as two specific African territories and their respective colonial metropolises.

Adopting primarily but not exclusively a discourse analytical approach we focus on four distinct spheres which are deemed essential for reconstructing the colonisers' mindset:

• Political utterances: Parliamentary debates and other political declarations, development plans and programmatic writings.
• Administrative documents including reports on colonial education, commerce, health service etc. at both the metropolitan level and the level of the two colonies in question.
• Academic texts from disciplines such as economy, geography or ethnography, including articles and books related to development issues.
• Colonial literature including novels, autobiographies and reports written by authors who were immediately involved with the colonial system.

By comparing Britain and France we try to establish whether the development discourses in the two major colonial powers of the 20th century had similar characteristics and followed similar trajectories within similar time horizons, thus pointing towards common structural features and circumstances that transcended specific national contexts.

*All photos: Courtesy of Paul Jackson