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Although the period between 1926 and 1934 was relatively peaceful, Imperial Defence policy-making in Britain focused on threats along the periphery of the Empire. This included a short-lived, but serious concern over Communist expansion in China and Afghanistan and a fear that American naval construction would undermine the Royal Navy's position in the world. The first threat receded by 1928 and the second was met by negotiating the highly successful London Naval Conference of 1930. Throughout these years, the need to reorient the Imperial Defence system to meet a perceived Japanese threat in the Far East, and the Treasury's opposition to the very idea, remained constants within policy-making circles. The world-wide depression led to serious defence cutbacks which the services met largely by cutting back even further on war reserves and mobilization potential. The Japanese assault on Manchuria in 1931, and then in Shanghai in 1932, exposed the inability of the Imperial Defence system to meet a Far Eastern threat. This led to pressure from the navy, in particular, for an increase in service estimates, but the economic situation and the World Disarmament Conference kept the government from agreeing to any significant change in policy. From 1931-193, Imperial Defence concerns were centred on the Far East, but Hitler‘s rise to power in March 1933 turned attention hack toward Europe. Nevertheless, the first large-scale review of Imperial defence deficiencies, the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, presented a report which balanced the needs of European and Far Eastern defence. In the spring of l934. however, the Cabinet found itself unable to come to a consensus on the DRC's recommendations and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, stepped forward with his own defence vision. He discounted the need for Far Eastern defence and re-oriented defence policy toward homeland defence. It was his intervention that set the tone for British rearmament in the 1930s.

Any person studying the history of the Cape Colony in the mid- Victorian years must soon grow aware of the contrast between what the imperial authorities said they intended to do and what they actually did. This is particularly obvious in the treatment of the frontier tribes, who lost their lands (and sometimes their lives) in the name of a policy described by one governor as based on 'morality and religion'. But it is also evident in many other spheres of government, and insistently raises the question of that British intentions really were and how far Ministers managed to achieve them. The evidence available is too vast and amorphous for a gene- ral survey to be attempted. In order to investigate the problem it is necessary to limit its scope. The period from 1846 to 1854 has been chosen because it embraced two frontier wars and a series of major administrative changes, involving prolonged consultation between Government House and Downing Street, and raising matters which affected the vital interests of the colonial population itself. It is also ground covered by other historians, but they have frequently differed as to the aims of the imperial government and the colonial reaction to them. One reason for their differences is plain: they have failed to take a comprehensive view of the sub- ject, such as the imperial government itself might have taken. Frontier policy is described as if it bore no relation to constitutional changes in Cape Town; local politics are discussed as if the British connection had little relevance. Britain's treatment of the Afrikaners led one of their leaders to style the nineteenth century a 'Century of Wrong.‘ But those sympa- thetic to the British approach have seen in it an attempt to infuse the spirit of British tolerance and justice into Cane society. They explain its contradictions by depicting an imperial power those 'high natives and worthy ends were frustrated by the inadequate resources which could be spared for the resolution of Cape problems. The material on which this conclusion rests is predominantly that found in official archives in Cape Town and London. A glance at the bibliographies of works by de Kiewiet, Galbraith, Morrell and Macmillan reveals no systematic attempt to study newspapers or other sources to check the accuracy or discover the undertones of official reporting from the Colony. Furthermore, large collections of private correspondence belonging to prominent politicians have recently been made public in Britain. Although often edited of financial or other sensitive items they still raise similar doubts about the comprehend- siveness of Colonial Office despatches. A new assessment of these sources is therefore required. In 1867 Bagehot differentiated between the 'distinguished' and the 'efficient' parts of the British constitution. The former he described as designed to 'excite and preserve the reverence of the population'; the latter as 'those by which it, in fact, works and rules'. This thesis attempts to show that Colonial Office pronouncements on the Cape likewise fall into two categories. Some were intended (again borrowing Bagehot's words) to 'win the loyalty and confidence of mankind'; others to 'employ that homage in the work of governmental. From this it follows that the statements in despatches are not invariably to be trusted, and that some are of greater significance in the interaction of Cape and British politics than others. The private correspondence helps us to differentiate. It also shows the Colonial Office less as a place where policy was made and more as one where decisions taken by Mini- sters were translated into a form understandable to governors and acceptable to the British public. Continued in thesis ...

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The most well-known events and occurrences that caused the American Revolution are well-documented. No scholar debates the importance of matters such as the colonists’ frustration with taxation without representation, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the Coercive Acts. However, very few scholars have paid attention to how the 1772 English court case that freed James Somerset from slavery impacted American Independence. This case occurred during a two-year stall in the conflict between the English government and her colonies that began in 1763. Between 1763 and 1770, there was ongoing conflict between the two parties, but the conflict temporarily subsided in 1770. Two years later, in 1772, the Somerset decision reignited tension and frustration between the mother country and her colonies. This paper does not claim that the Somerset decision was the cause of colonial separation from England. Instead it argues that the Somerset decision played a significant yet rarely discussed role in the colonists’ willingness to begin meeting with one another to discuss their common problem of shared grievance with British governance. It prompted the colonists to begin relating to one another and to the British in a way that they never had previously. This case’s impact on intercolonial relations and relations between the colonies and her mother country are discussed within this work.

In this study, we employ the theory of deconstruction to challenge and reject the contention that a knowledge paradigm was non-existent among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe before the arrival of the colonisers. This is necessary because the imposition of the colonisers’ knowledge paradigm was premised on the supposed absence of an epistemology among the indigenous people. In defending the thesis that education and indeed an epistemology was in existence among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe, we submit that education is part of any given culture. In the light of this, it becomes untenable to deny the existence of education among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe before the arrival of the colonisers. Knowledge ceases to be the exclusive preserve of the colonisers. It must be noted that the imposition of the colonisers’ knowledge paradigm was accompanied by the suppression and partial destruction of the epistemology of the indigenous people. The suppression and partial destruction of the indigenous people’s epistemological paradigm is called epistemicide. The epistemicide that the colonisers inflicted on the indigenous people led to the exclusive dominance of their knowledge paradigm in the school curriculum at the expense of that of the indigenous people. In the light of this status quo, we present transformation and Africanisation as corrective to the unjustified dominance of the present day curriculum by the epistemological paradigm of the colonisers. We argue that despite the commendable proposals contained in the Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (1999: 24) to change the curriculum so that unhu/ubuntu becomes its organising principle and to allow the co-existence of the indigenous people’s epistemological paradigm and others, in practice the dominance of the colonisers’ epistemological paradigm remains in place. We submit that the Africanisation of the curriculum is a matter of justice that demands the end of the dominance of the knowledge paradigm of the colonisers and the co-existence of the indigenous people’s knowledge paradigm and others / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Litt et Phil. (Philosophy)