The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire

Part II of this historiographical study examines British education policy in Africa, and in the many crown colonies, protectorates, and mandated territories around the globe. Up until 1920, the British government took far less interest than in India, in the development of schooling in Africa and the rest of the colonial empire, and education was generally left to local initiative and voluntary effort. British interest in the control of education policy in Africa and elsewhere lasted only from the 1920s to the 1950s, as territories assumed responsibility for their own internal affairs as a prelude to independence. Nevertheless, critics were not slow to attack British direction of colonial education in the 1930s and thereafter.In retrospect it is clear that colonial education policy was fraught with much confusion of purpose and lack of resources, apathy and hostility. The literature has ranged from close scholarly studies of education policy in individual countries to passionate and more theoretically based critiques of colonial schooling. But as immediate passions surrounding demise of the Empire have receded, alternative analyses have begun to emerge.