Structure and Process in the Bureaucratic States of Colonial Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Structure and Process in the Bureaucratic States of Colonial Africa
Author:	Berman, Bruce J.
Year:	1984
Periodical:	Development and Change
Volume:	15
Issue:	2
Period:	April
Pages:	161-202
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Subsaharan Africa Africa
Subjects:	colonialism colonial economy Economics and Trade Development and Technology
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1984.tb00178.x
Abstract:	Throughout colonial Africa the state struggled to perform two contradictory tasks: first, to secure the conditions for the extraction of commodities and accumulation of capital by metropolitan interests by managing their articulation with indigenous forms of production; and second, to provide, as an essential pre-condition for accumulation, a framework of stable political order and effective control over the indigenous population. The author examines the role of the colonial state as an agency of accumulation and domination, employing by way of illustration empirical material drawn from the experience of the French and British colonies of West, Central and East Africa. In the last section the real historical sequence of the development, decline and eventual displacement of the colonial state is considered. Notes.