Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences in the Era of Decolonization: The Examples of British and French Africa

Abstract

For scholars, as for the leaders of colonial empires and anti-colonial activists, the period of decolonization was a moment of uncertainty. It was no longer politically possible to divide the world between advanced and primitive beings. Africa would no longer remain the exclusive domain of anthropologists, and anthropologists would be obliged to rethink what distinguished their domain of research. Historians of empire — whose job it had been to make known the accomplishments of whites in regions otherwise without history — were increasingly marginalized or obliged to convert themselves into historians of Africa or Asia. Sociologists, economists, and political scientists, for whom colonized territories had previously held little interest, saw opening before them a new world to discover — and a lack of theory with which to analyse it.