The Colonial European

The colonial situation involved not only the Africans but also the Europeans who came out to administer and exploit them. In the administrative centres where there were more than three or four Europeans, and especially where there were wives, colonial society created its own hierarchy, albeit the hierarchy of an aristocracy, its own customs and codes. For the British the educated African was a gaudy, despised imitator of European ways. In the colonial situation, then, the European insisted on bolstering up his new aristocracy by a declaration of inalienable superiority, which made it a closed aristocracy like that of France before the Revolution. But whether French or British, the white man, though numerically a minority, formed a sociological majority in the African colonies. This generation elite was the crisis generation of colonial rule, the bridge between acceptance and rejection, the inspirers of African independence.

Archaeology · Colonialism · Political science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History