A hierarchy of colonial officials extended from the Secretary of State for the
Colonies at the apex down to district commissioners in charge of large pop-
ulations and supervising the exercise of customary law by indigenous judges
and law-makers regarded as legitimate by the local population.
The French and Portuguese, by contrast, attempted assimilation. This
meant that native peoples were to be turned into Europeans, particularly
through Western education. This had significant implications for the devel-
opment of areas in which local political élites identified closely with Europe
and European culture. There was a much more vigorous policy, albeit in
reality aimed at a select minority and with limited effect (Berman, 1984,
p. 177), in French than in British territories of turning local people into local
versions of the populations of the imperial power. The assumption was that
local culture was an obstacle to the spread of European civilization.
The availability of fertile land and the possibility of utilizing it for peas-
ant cash cropping or plantations for tea, coffee, sugar and cotton, were other
variable factors. Sometimes the land could only be exploited for produce
that was already indigenous to the area. The introduction of cash crops from
abroad (such as rubber into Malaya from Brazil) was not always feasible.
The availability of deep-water harbours which could be linked to the inte-
rior by railways and roads also affected the pattern of colonial intervention.
Structure of communications and transportation were highly variable.
Initially rivers were the key to expansion, allowing penetration into the inte-
rior without any significant capital outlay. Traditional communication
routes tended to determine the spatial pattern of colonial investment. The
presence of minerals was another factor – copper in East Africa, gold and
diamonds in Southern Africa, and tin in Bolivia, for example. Climatic con-
ditions also differed, for example making East Africa far more conducive to
European settlement than West Africa.
Another variable was the indigenous social structures of the colonized
territories. Some local communities were extremely simple in their eco-
nomic activities, being based on hunting and gathering. Some were
nomadic pastoral communities, surviving on the basis of livestock which
was grazed over regular transhumance routes. Other societies had complex
agrarian systems with highly elaborate organizations for production, distri-
bution and exchange. Levels of urbanization varied considerably, too, with
some societies based on towns that performed the roles of administrative
and commercial centres. Some societies were highly feudalistic in terms of
relations between landowners and their tenant cultivators, whereas
elsewhere more egalitarian systems were found, with land held in common
and individual plots cultivated by families without rights to alienate or
Theories of Imperialism and Colonialism 37