(Page 9 of 20) - Schizophrenic Governance and Fostering Global Inequalities in the British Empire: The UK Domestic State Versus the Indian and African Colonies, 1890-1960 authored by Subrahmanyam, Gita.

2004 [American Political Science Association]

table we can see that the overwhelming priority of the British state in India and Africa was
with its own self-maintenance. The table vividly indicates the low levels of spending in the
African colonies compared with India, which is in turn dwarfed by spending in the UK home
territory. The bottom half of the table shows the shares of total spending in each territory
along the three functional categories. There are important differences between UK spending
patterns and those of the non-white colonies. First, the UK’s share of defining concerns
spending declined over time (except in war years), while outlays on economic programmes
grew appreciably and those on social programmes expanded greatly. In India and the African
colonies, the expenditure share taken by defining concerns was higher than in the UK home
territory before 1939, and the proportion spent on economic programmes was also larger.
Meanwhile, social spending absorbed only between 3 and 9 per cent across the colonies’
spending taken as a whole, compared with a range of 23 to 31 per cent in the UK for non-war
years. Moreover, the colonies’ welfare proportion did not grow at all between 1900 and the
Second World War.

[insert Table 3 about here]

These aspects become more clear when we examine the five leading areas of public

expenditure in the different territories, displayed in Table 4. In the UK, military and education
headings made up the largest proportion of public outlays. Other major headings prior to the
Second World War were transport infrastructure, general and tax administration, and public
works charges. However, these were soon overtaken by other spending areas. The fastest-
growing expenditure headings after the war were the ‘new’ areas, such as health, pensions,
unemployment assistance and housing. The welfare-oriented growth evident in the UK was in
sharp contrast to government spending patterns in Britain’s Indian and African colonies. India’s
main expenditure focus was on railways and ports and on the military. The next most
prominent spending head was general/tax administration, followed by public debt charges,
police and law and order expenses, and public works and utilities. These six headings
dominated Indian spending throughout the forty-seven years surveyed here. The three African
colonies were strikingly similar in their public spending profiles, at least after their colonial
‘start-up’ phases.

Up to the Second World War, their public outlays were concentrated in

charges and the payment of pensions and gratuities to government officials. ‘Economic programmes’ refer to
those functions that a regime will undertake to develop the country’s economic potential. This category
comprises the transportation and communications infrastructure, including roads and railways, ports and
harbours, and postal and telegraphic networks, as well as public works. The category also extends to trade,
economic and industrial development schemes, as well as public promotion of natural resources, through
agricultural, forestry, game and veterinary programmes. Additionally, it includes government land, survey and
mineral investments. The third category, ‘social programmes’, covers public funding of medical and sanitation
services, educational provision and other social programmes, such as housing, social insurance and recreational
activities. The three categories are useful, because they fulfil the statistical requirements of mutual exclusivity
and exhaustiveness, are broad enough to allow for comparisons across countries which are not very similar, and
allow us to assess the extent to which state spending was directed towards ‘control’ (law and order) areas versus
economic and social welfare development. Public expenditures here exclude capital and extraordinary charges,
as well as inter-governmental transfers. For commercial departments such as railways and postal services, I
include current working rather than gross expenditures. Additionally, I exclude finance charges on debt for the
UK and native and local government expenditures for Nigeria. For further details on my methods may be found
in Subrahmanyam (2003).

The main differences between the three colonies centred on whether the territory was a standard

crown colony or a mandate. Military and defence expenditures were not as prominent in Tanganyika as they
were in Kenya, because the mandate prohibited military training of Africans, other than for internal defence.
Similarly, because the Permanent Mandates Commission ‘scrutinized studiously the material relating to the
progress made in the provision of medical and educational facilities’, there was greater funding of these areas in
Tanganyika than in either Nigeria or Kenya, especially prior to the Second World War (Hailey, 1957: 424).