In the years after 1959 Britain's disengagement from her colonial Empire was comprehensive and rapid. A newly re-elected Conservative government, well aware that many special interests would suffer in the process, set out nevertheless to press the policy of decolonisation speedily to its end. This new tempo of policy was a natural enough response to the experiences of the preceding years. The decade and a half since the war had encompassed both the rise of articulate and aggressive colonial nationalism and a steep decline in Britain's own power in the world. What Macmillan and Macleod recognised, in essence, was that a point had been reached beyond which the continuation of the old gradualist tempo of devolution would precipitate more colonial unrest than Britain could hope to contain. Thus the period from the end of the war to the general election of 1959 appears in retrospect as the penultimate phase of Britain's colonial experience, spanning those events and movements of ideas in terms of which the hurried conclusion of the early sixties may be understood. This work attempts to discuss the domestic politics of colonial policy in the period. It is motivated not by any general belief that the approach to decolonisation is best studied from the domestic point of view, but simply by the hope of illuminating an area of the picture which, by comparison with the events in the colonies themselves, has remained in shadow. The study deals with the activities of the major political parties and certain pressure groups within that area of British political activity having the Colonial Office and Parliament as its focal points. It is organised around two broad questions. Firstly, how were colonial problems and issues dealt with in British politics; that is, what kinds of attitudes and activities were stimulated among parties and groups by the existence, and the changing character, of this area of British responsibility? Secondly, how far did domestic political activity affect the course of governmental policy?

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of South Africa, 2002.

This thesis is a study of British colonial policy in southern Afiica in the 1 gill centwy. More specifically it looks at how British imperial policy, in the period 1875 to 1881, played itself out in two British colonies in southern Africa, Wlder the direction of a British imperial agent, William Owen Lanyon. It sets Lanyon in the context of the frontiers and attempts to link the histories of the people who lived there, the Africans, Boers and British settlers on the one han~ and the histories of colonial policy on the other. In doing so it also unravels the relationship between Lanyon and his superiors in London and those in southern Africa. In 1875 Owen Lanyon arrived in Griqualand West, where his brief was to help promote a confederation policy in southern Africa. Because of the discovery of diamonds some years earlier, Lanyon's administration had to take account of the rising mining industry and the aggressive new capitalist economy. He also had to deal with Griqua and Tlhaping resistance to colonialism. Lanyon was transferred to the Transvaal in 1879, where he was confronted by another community that was dissatisfied with British rule: the Transvaal Boers. Indeed, in Pretoria he was faced with an extremely difficult situation, which he handled very poorly. Boer resistance to imperial rule eventually came to a head when war broke out and Lanyon and his officials were among those besieged in Pretoria. In February 1881 imperial troops suffered defeat at the hands of Boer commandos at Majuba and Lanyon was recalled to Britain. In both colonies Lanyon was caught up in the struggle between the imperial power and the local people and, seen in a larger context, in the conflict for white control over the land and labour of Africans and that between the old pre-mineral South Africa and the new capitalist order. He made a crucial contribution to developments in the sub-continent and it is remarkable that his role in southern Africa has thus far been neglected. / History / D.Litt. et Phil. (History)

This thesis is a study of British colonial policy in southern Afiica in the 1 gill centwy. More specifically it looks at how British imperial policy, in the period 1875 to 1881, played itself out in two British colonies in southern Africa, Wlder the direction of a British imperial agent, William Owen Lanyon. It sets Lanyon in the context of the frontiers and attempts to link the histories of the people who lived there, the Africans, Boers and British settlers on the one han~ and the histories of colonial policy on the other. In doing so it also unravels the relationship between Lanyon and his superiors in London and those in southern Africa. In 1875 Owen Lanyon arrived in Griqualand West, where his brief was to help promote a confederation policy in southern Africa. Because of the discovery of diamonds some years earlier, Lanyon's administration had to take account of the rising mining industry and the aggressive new capitalist economy. He also had to deal with Griqua and Tlhaping resistance to colonialism. Lanyon was transferred to the Transvaal in 1879, where he was confronted by another community that was dissatisfied with British rule: the Transvaal Boers. Indeed, in Pretoria he was faced with an extremely difficult situation, which he handled very poorly. Boer resistance to imperial rule eventually came to a head when war broke out and Lanyon and his officials were among those besieged in Pretoria. In February 1881 imperial troops suffered defeat at the hands of Boer commandos at Majuba and Lanyon was recalled to Britain. In both colonies Lanyon was caught up in the struggle between the imperial power and the local people and, seen in a larger context, in the conflict for white control over the land and labour of Africans and that between the old pre-mineral South Africa and the new capitalist order. He made a crucial contribution to developments in the sub-continent and it is remarkable that his role in southern Africa has thus far been neglected. / History / D.Litt. et Phil. (History)