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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Maintenance of Law and Order in British Colonial Africa |
Author: | Killingray, David |
Year: | 1986 |
Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society |
Volume: | 85 |
Issue: | 340 |
Period: | July |
Pages: | 411-437 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Africa Great Britain colonial territories |
Subjects: | colonialism national security Law, Human Rights and Violence History and Exploration |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/722968 |
Abstract: | For most of the colonial period British administration in colonial Africa 'rested on a minimum of force'. Even in the. years of conquest and 'pacification' colonial military and police forces were numerically small. As the system of indirect rule was established there was a tendency for European administration to retreat from the African countryside and pass the maintenance of law and order to Native Authorities. In the period of run-up to the transfer of power (1954-64) serious unrest and rebellion occurred in a limited number of colonies; only in Kenya during Mau Mau was there a situation close to 'a security state', and only in Nyasaland in 1959 did the colonial state assume such arbitrary powers that the Devlin Commission called it 'a police state'. Notes, ref. |