Introductory Survey by Margery Perham , C.B.E., Fellow in Imperial Government, Nuffield College, and late Reader in Colonial Administration in the University of Oxford
First of seven talks
Next talk: Saturday at 9.30
What are our relations to the Colonial peoples and what is their place in the world scheme? Are they to be thought of primarily as producers of food and raw materials for the rest of the world, or as young nations whose political development should be our first concern? Ideas on the Colonies tend to be oversimplified, since many people judge Colonial problems in the terms of their experience of an ' advanced ' industrialised world, and do not know what are the implications of, say, large-scale mechanisation, or political responsibility, to peoples who live in a primitive social structure with a hand-tool economy. Over the years our Colonial administration has been attempting a slow, balanced development of the Colonial territories. Today the pressure of world need-involving large-scale development-and new ideologies, threaten to dislocate this careful planning and, consequently, a serious situation faces us and the Colonial peoples themselves. Four of these talks will deal with some of the fundamental difficulties in the British Colonies and two others with the methods of American and French Colonial administration. The speakers will be men and women-administrators, anthropologists, scientists, educators-who have had direct experience in Colonial relations and field work.