The Culture of Colonialism is T. O. Beidelman's most recent book in a long scholarly career. In it, he broadens the way Africanists will think about ethnicity and Indirect Rule. It is true that he makes some familiar arguments, such as that Kaguru were ethnically unified. He also amply demonstrates that native authorities were torn between following orders from Europeans and working and living with the Africans whom they represented. But one of his chief arguments is that British colonialism was founded on deceit and illusion. The detail with which he describes the unreliability of native authorities and their work undermines the certainty of much writing about the colonial era. Beidelman began his fieldwork in the last years of formal colonialism and, as he points out, there are not many anthropologists and historians still working with such firsthand experience. Thus, he argues, even though Ukaguru was a colonial backwater and a society without complex political structures, it is perhaps more representative of the British colonial experience in East Africa than other cases.
Beidelman ably shows that documents produced by the native authorities and their bosses, the district commissioners, have little bearing on reality. At the heart of Beidelman's account are the native authority courts, the primary mechanism through which most Kaguru experienced a headman and/or a chief's authority. These courts, due to the nature of Indirect Rule, became sites for clan and ethnic politics. In many cases, chiefs' courts discriminated against outsiders, assessing fines and punishment far beyond what a Kaguru might receive for a similar crime. Clerks wrote native authority court transcripts even though they had not attended the hearings. And these records were the ‘main written accounts available to British officials for checking how skillful the Native Authority officials were in doing what Indirect Rule was said to be all about, controlling local Africans in the bush’ (p. 158). Thus, there was a serious gap between the record and the reality that no researcher can entirely traverse.
Another important aspect of the book is the careful and unapologetic manner in which Biedelman demonstrates the ways that colonial rule derailed any effort at effective African political or economic development. He notes that the native authority in Ukaguru was a structure that was ‘both valued and disdained’ (p. xix) and that ‘fostered both ethnicity and localism’ (p. xx) rather than creating a structure or identity that would take Africans into the modern political era. Indirect Rule was a means of social control rather than social progress, he argues, quoting John Iliffe (p. 72). This reality belies another conceit of British rule: that Indirect Rule and missionary Christianity would enable ‘Africans to enter the modern world and govern themselves’ (p. 30). Instead, Africans entered the modern era with little trust in government.
He also has little positive to say about Kaguru political systems prior to colonialism or about Nyerere's post-independence government. Thus, colonialism is neither better nor worse than its antecedent or precursor. Yet, it shaped that future in ways that are still being felt in Tanzania. For example, Indirect Rule led frustrated, educated Africans to move to towns to avoid hostile and corrupt chiefs, and a system that gave them no opportunity for leadership. Most educated Africans were not interested in positions of colonial authority because headmen's and chiefs' wages were very low relative to other available employment. As a result, upon independence, the national government lacked sufficient numbers of educated Africans with governing experience or interest in governing to be effective. Attracting the educated elite to government positions remains a challenge to this day.
We are fortunate to have this book. Not only is it a very useful addition to colonial studies, but it also demonstrates the value of decades of teaching and writing in assessing the centuries-long trajectory of political institutions in one area of Tanzania.
