Bernard Durand, Erk Volkmar Heyen:
Editorial, VII-XI
(Volltext: http://www.uni-greifswald.de/%7Elo1/ed18.htm)

I. Themenschwerpunkt

Bernard Durand:
Comparative Approaches and Models of Colonial Administration, 1-20

In comparative studies, it is difficult to propose models and typologies, especially when one compares institutions which have not been studied in the same manner, nor by the same scholarly milieux. The task becomes almost impossible when the subject is the colonial administration of different European powers. One encounters a series of obstacles stemming from the mobility of suggested models (section I), the variability of imagined solutions (section II) and the uncertainty of the policies applied (section III). The models proposed by historians of colonisation and the jurists who experienced it, though useful in discerning major characteristics, are extremely fragile. The relatively short time of colonial administrations produced "mutant" institutions which are difficult to reduce to simple models, even if some "modelisation" can be interesting.
In the first, "mercantilist", period of colonisation, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the policy was to subject the colonies to the interest of the colonial powers, a policy applied in North America, South America and Indonesia. Starting from the middle of the 18th century, this policy was contested and then progressively abandoned, under the influence, first of the physiocrats, then of the "liberal" economists. One may ask whether the lessons learned from the old colonial empires were pertinent when, in the last quarter of the 19th century, the European countries, in a new colonial impulse, began the conquest of Africa and of Asia. One sees emerging at that time models, more of colonial policy than of administration, showing very differing orientations, which had already been characteristic of the older phase of colonisation. Assimilation on the one hand, autonomy on the other, emerge almost as slogans, though this opposition must be nuanced, especially on the administrative level. But beyond projects, programmes and slogans, the colonial administrations were faced with realities which could perturb the best prepared programmes, and obliges the researcher to take into account a multitude of parameters. Economic priorities, demographic capacities and the realities of local life correct ideals and necessitate a great adaptability. Finally, if the passage from the model concerned in the home country to colonial reality imposed many modifications and sacrifices, the elaboration of a colonial model likely to accurately describe the originality of such a system is just as difficult.

Jacques Vanderlinden:
The Government of Belgian Congo (1908-1960): A Twice Double-Headed Eagle?, 21-62

Seen on the surface, the government of the Belgian colony seems quite classical. On the one hand, there is a metropolitan administration headed by the minister of Colonies who is politically responsible to the Belgian Parliament. On the other hand, there is a governor-general with extensive, although, in principle, carefully controlled powers. In practice, things are quite different, especially when governors have strong personalities, when the minister – who normally has no direct knowledge of colonial problems – is not specially keen to investigate what happens thousands of miles away from his office, or when there is no real concern in the political circles in Brussels for what happens in Africa. Thus appears the image of a double-headed eagle: the minister of Colonies on one side, the governor-general on the other. But ministers as well as governors pass; administrations remain stable. Be it in Europe or in Africa, civil servants effectively conceive, define and administer policies in many fields. This is not to say that whatever they dream of is necessarily accepted or that they necessarily sing with one voice. There is a good deal of interdepartmental competition for a decent chunk of the colonial budget. Thus, occasionally, the last word will be that of the minister in Brussels or the governor-general in Léopoldville. But, essentially, colonial policies owe much, if not everything, to civil servants. Each head of the double-headed eagle is, in turn, divided in two. The article considers each of these four heads in detail.
If one looks at the successive incumbents of the ministry of Colonies, one notices that their time of office is quite variable; on an average, before Wold War II, they will be at the helm for 18 months. One will accordingly not be surprised if only two of them appear as having had a real global colonial policy and these are the two first holders of the position. At their side was the ministry of Colonies. Some of its highest-ranking staff were persons of exceptional talent who shaped the Belgian colonial policy far more than did ministers. But, however bright they may have been, they were confronted with a long-standing mistrust towards and from their colleagues who administered the colony in Léopoldville. The representative of the Belgian government was the governor-general. Between 1908 and 1934, there was an alternation of army officers and civil servants in the function. Most governors were chosen for their sense of discipline and the assurance that they would do what the minister would tell them to do. This was the will of the Belgian legislator who badly wanted to control local authorities to a maximum in order to avoid the abuses of the Congo Free State. There were only two governors who did not fit that mould: one of them resigned before the end of his duties as he did not accept the minister's control; as for the other, he had such knowledge of colonial problems and such an ascendancy not only over successive ministers but also over his staff, that he left, after an unusual 12 years of duty, a definite mark in the history of the colony. At the side of the governor-general in Léopoldville was an administration of experienced and well trained civil servants of whom most worked at the level of local government. Yet, in spite of their qualifications and knowledge of the local environment, they were often looked down on by their counterparts in Brussels. In Africa, besides the European civil servants, also existed a quite distinct category of African administrative agents; they were organized under specific regulations, with also a distinct union to defend and promote their rights with respect to the government. It is only just before Independence, in 1959, that the two categories were brought together.

Bernard Durand:
Administering or Governing the French Colonies: "The Flore Empire", 63-108

With their first headquarters in the "Pavillon de Flore" in Paris, over the period from 1894 to 1939 a hundred ministers of the French colonies managed the French colonial Empire. Was their capacity to govern seriously limited by the situation of the territories, their international implications and domestic political challenges? One obvious weakness was the fact that not all colonial possessions fell under their authority. We can observe moreover, that under pressure from colonial realities, they were obliged to rely to a great extent on cooperation from the heads of other ministries (Foreign Affairs, Interior, Defence, Public Works, etc.), to accept a degree of decentralisation favouring regional governors. It was also necessary to share legislative initiative and to direct an administration struggling to follow the instructions of an authority trying to reconcile geographical and technical approaches. It was in addition inevitable to leave to local instances the role of "chiefs of Empire".
Concerned to reconcile their task as parliamentary ministers with the technical proficiency necessary for the management of colonies, to reassure Parliament concerning overseas commitments that were as costly as they were risky, and to avoid becoming another "War ministry", the first colonial ministers struggled for many years to find their place in the governmental ensemble. The variety of tasks set before them led them to constitute a team of counsellors and organisations considered by some to reproduce competences already in place in competing ministries. It took the ministerial offices a long time to find an organisation capable of dealing with the problems at hand: too technical, the division of services was finally not adapted to the real situation; too geographical, this division was responsible for a scattering of decisions and a lack of political vision. Regarding personnel, the experience in other ministries was of no help, as the concerns of the ministry of Colonies were as different from those of Foreign Affairs as they were from those of the Interior ministry. Obliged to rely on a legislation that was incomplete and divided between several agents, they governed the colonies with a combination of centralisation and decentralisation, which is to say that, from the end of the 19th century, they left to the govenors-general very broad economic and political powers. This multiplicity of agents, reacting to international technical and political factors, explains how difficult it was to govern an Empire, nonetheless judged by historians to have been coherent and efficient. Colonial policy seemed more driven by certain strong personalities than by a patiently and nationally directed collective will.

Pedro Tavares de Almeida, Paulo Silveira e Sousa:
Ruling the Portuguese Empire (1820-1926): The Colonial Office and Its Leadership, 109-126

Portugal was one of the first and most enduring European colonial powers of modern times: 1415 and 1975 mark the beginning and the end of a long period of empire that left impressive imprints in many places. Since it started, the overseas expansion and the exploration of the colonial resources were closely linked with state-building and the preservation of national independence. In the 19th century and early 20th century, Portugal was a peripheral country, and the economic gap with the rich and industrialized core of Europe was wide. During this period, however, the country faced the critical challenge of ruling vast and geographically scattered overseas territories, and of preserving them from the greed of strong imperialist powers.
The article starts by outlining the major developments in Portuguese colonial policy over a century. The independence of Brazil (1822) was a crucial turning point, which brought about a shift towards Africa. The First Republic (1910-1926), pervaded by a nationalist ideology, gave a new impetus to the efforts towards a more effective colonisation. Symptomatically, a ministry of Colonies was then established for the first time. Second, it describes and analyses the transformation of the Central Office for Colonial Affairs, stressing the increasing bureaucratic specialisation, the growth of the apparatus and its staff, and the introduction of new criteria for the selection and promotion of permanent officials (namely a higher profile given to careers in local colonial administration). Finally, it presents a collective biography of both the politicians (Cabinet ministers) and the administrators (directors-general) who ran the Colonial Office for a large period of the Constitutional Monarchy (from 1851 to 1910) and during the First Republic, thus the impact of regime change on elite circulation and career patterns to be assessed.

Guido Melis:
The Establishment and First Experience of the Ministry of Colonies in Italy (1912-1922), 127-150

In the period studied here there were two main models of colonial administration, the British and the French. Italy chose not to adopt either of them but to orient itself towards a blend of the two models, adding a good dose of typically Italian bureaucratic centralism.
Before 1912 the Italian colonies (Eritrea and Somalia) had been managed by the ministry of Foreign Affairs, and more precisely by the Direction for Colonial Transactions (1911), and before that by a Colonial Office created in 1898. As regards personnel, a special staff of colonial officials for Eritrea had been established in 1890; by 1894 a current staff list had been drawn up for the colonies. Furthermore, an organizational model based on the autonomy of the colonial staff with regard to the central administration had been defined in Somalia. Lastly in 1909, relying on the experience in Somalia, an organization of administration based on "colonial agents" had been adopted also for Eritrea.
The model that was created from this "in progress" legislation was substantially based on the fundamental principle of the separation and specialization of the colonial staff and the central administration. This line of action, however, was overturned after the conquest of Libya in 1912. The new law created in that year allowed the government to second – "in temporary service" – employees of other ministries, and also, exceptionally, people not connected with public service but with a special aptitude for colonial service. The system's structure was completed with a royal decree on the 15th of January 1914. The unitary structure was immediately highly staffed. One of the most immediately visible features was the legal-administrative and hierarchical blueprint given to the internal organisation model. In the new administration, numerous employees from the old central Direction for Colonial Transactions found a position, but also staff from other administrations abounded. Of the three directors-general incumbent in 1914, none had any knowledge of the colonies or had even spent a short period in Africa.
In 1919-1920, as the war-induced break ended, public hiring resumed, in the meantime the ministry of Colonies also felt the pressure of the large amount of temporary staff. The problem of an adequate appraisal of the specific colonial experience remained totally unresolved in this situation. A 1924 memorandum written by the director-general for the Colonies of North Africa, Luigi Pintor, denounced this state of affairs in a ruthless diagnosis. Pintor was the civil employee who more than any other, and with greater sincerity and courage, represented between 1917 and 1924 the position of the colonial culture vis-à-vis the bureaucratization processes taking place within the ministry. He therefore became involved in a strong conflict with the Roman bureaucracy, in particular with the liberal minister Giovanni Amendola. His career and activities are analyzed in detail.
After Pintor's death in 1925, a campaign aimed at portraying his anti-Amendola controversies as an ante litteram pro-fascist attitude took place. In reality, in Pintor's Papers, no traces of affinity with fascism are to be found. An important instance (but in the opposite sense to the previous one) of the relationship between the new fascist government and the colonial bureaucracy was the case of Eduardo Baccari, who had been sent to Cyrenaica as governor of the colony in 1922. Also his activities are dealt with. If on the one hand Baccari had been hostile to Pintor, Riccardo Astuto had instead enjoyed with him a cordial friendship. As colonial director from July 1919, having spent periods of time in Somalia, Astuto was transferred in January 1923 to Tripolitania and a few months later he was appointed general secretary of Cyrenaica. In June 1924, he was recalled to the ministry as head of the director-general's Office of the Colonies. His further career as governor of Eritrea from 1930 to 1935 as well as his break with the regime are analyzed.
Careful to locate and possibly to strike at any residual loyalty to the liberal ruling class on an individual basis, the fascist regime did not generally carry out a special campaign of political cleansing in the ministry of Colonies (or in any other state administration department). From a practical point of view the staff reform promoted between 1927 and 1928 by the minister Federzoni, that partially fulfilled the reformist requests of the previous years, was a lot more effective. In practice, the colonial staff, after the Federzoni reform, was modelled according to the rigid hierarchical lines that, in general terms, the De Stefani reform had dictated to all the administrations of the State in 1923.

Benjamin Rahal:
Judicial Review of French Colonial Administration: Between Supporting High Administration and Protecting Administered Citizens, 151-186

The French colonies were a field of experimentation with regard to administrative jurisdiction in France itself. Since 1881, administrative jurisdiction in the Colonies was shared between the Council of State (Conseil d'Etat), supreme administrative judicial instance, and the councils of administrative dispute (conseils du contentieux administratif), administrative judges of first resort and droit commun, with no equivalent in France. But this division of competence did not completely hinder the monopoly of the Council of State, which preserved its exclusiveness in the most significant disputes: e.g. those concerning the abuse of power (recours pour excès de pouvoir). It then remained the only instance able to quash administrative acts, and to hear litigations blaming the high colonial administration. From this privilege of competence, the aim of the Council of State was to reconcile the flexibility of intervention of the high colonial administrators with the image of an effective administrative jurisdiction à la française. It also had to find a balance between its powers and those of the lower judges. The article analyses the decisions of the Council of State in detail.

Louis De Clerck:
The Belgian Colonial Administration in the Congo (1908-1960) and Ruanda-Urundi (1925-1960), 187-210

When, in 1908, the Congo Free State, founded in 1885 by King Leopold II, became a Belgian colony, a specific civil service was created, composed exclusively of civilians who received a special training and were recruited for a full career. This administration of less than 1500 members in 1908 reached about 10000 in 1960. The core of the colonial civil service was the territorial service, most of whose members were graduates of the Colonial University. In order to ensure a more effective control over the district commissioners and their assistants working in the field, the Belgian Congo was divided into four provinces ruled by vice-governors-general, who had the same administrative and legal powers as the governor-general. In 1933, to ensure a better coordination of the administrative and economic policy, the vice-gouvernements-généraux were replaced by six provinces headed by provincial governors, each representing the governor-general in his province. Each province consisted of three districts divided into territoires.
In the field and in the native townships the members of the territorial service lived in permanent and close contact with the African population and were involved, in a paternalistic way, in all administrative, judicial and economic activities of the chiefdoms and native townships. From its beginning the government of the colony recognised the traditional authority of the native chiefs. Its native policy intended to develop the country through the evolution of the traditional institutions. The colonial law recognised the local customary laws but also influenced them. Successive decrees organised the chiefdoms, so to make the native authorities gradually more responsible for the economic and social development of the population. The native townships (centres extra-coutumiers) were also organised by decree. During the last years of colonisation, indigenous chiefdoms and native townships were organised to make them self-supporting administrative entities, their chiefs and counsellors being elected.
Rwanda and Burundi were old kingdoms, becoming parts of German East Africa at the end of the 19th century. They were ruled by Belgium as from 1925 under mandate of the League of Nations and later under trusteeship of the United Nations. The "Territory of Ruanda-Urundi" was administratively united to the Belgian Congo, although politically distinct from it. It was headed by a vice-governor-general under supervision of the governor-general of the Belgian Congo. Two kingdoms each formed an administrative résidence divided into territories. The traditional authority of both kings (bami) and the chiefs as well as the traditional political organisation were maintained. More than in the Belgian Congo, indirect rule left initiative to the native authorities. As from 1942, successive decrees tended to modernize the traditional political system.

Jean-Pierre Royer:
The "Maître Jacques" of Colonisation: From Molière to the History of French Administrators in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880-1930, 211-230

The article tries to retrace the life and experience of the French administrators who, from 1880 to 1930, passed through African territories several times as large as France. It is based on records that for the most part have not yet been published, sources that have been collected in the course of several investigative missions in the archives of the former French Sub-Sahara. The article shows the illusions and disillusions of these men, their mental states, that could include sincere commitment to work for the transmission of what they believed to be the true and novel values of the French Republic as well as the feeling of being obliged to accept realities that differed wholly from what they might have imagined. Responsible for everything, the "Maîtres Jacques" of colonisation – in allusion to Molière's Miser – travelled in order to try to rule the African populations, as far as possible, à la française by striving to inculcate occidental norms, appearing as trivial as those concerning time and punctuality. During their travels they had to confront arising oppositions, whether of intransigent native milieux, or those of Europeans behaving in an abusive manner. Did they leave traces of their passing? This is the question that still remains controversial, and to which this article would like to contribute some elements of an answer.

Dagmar Bechtloff, Administration Building between Colonial Interests and Indigenous Resistance: Madagascar 1904-1924, 231-248

The process of establishing French colonial administration on Madagascar extended over a period of more than four decades. The process began in December 1885 when Madagascar's last Queen signed the protectorate treaty with France. In 1896, the island was formally declared a French colony, nevertheless the southern part of Madagascar maintained armed resistance until 1904. Then the administrative penetration of the region began. Different models were put to the test and rejected. The original French intention to hand over the administration to trustworthy Malagasies so as to build up a kind of "internal protectorate", failed for a number of reasons. Often it proved impossible to gain the pre-colonial local leadership's confidence. The hope of the colonial administration to recruit loyal local partners by recourse to distant relatives of previous indigenous ruling clans was also wrecked, because, although these persons belonged to the former dynasties, they did not enjoy the people's confidence. Likewise the attempt to create a climate of trust between the colonizing and the colonized by way of gaining the confidence of the council of elders of the villages did not succeed. The arrival of the new governor-general in 1924 and the following fundamental reforms of colonial administration put an end to this stage of experiments. The way this complex development of Madagascar's colonial administrative penetration during the two decades between the end of military pacification in 1904 and the beginning of final administrative reforms in 1924 took place is shown with respect to the southern regions of the island, the restless area around Fort Dauphin and in the countryside of Tuléar. The analysis is based on unpublished records.

Séverine Benzimra:
Admission to the Civil Service in North Africa under French Rule, 249-280

Some characteristics of French colonial administration in North Africa were particularly due to the presence of a sizeable French community. Algeria was divided into three départements, integrated into France, while Morocco and Tunisia were protectorates. France created or developed a modern administration by applying the French system. To achieve this the authorities employed both French and indigenous staff. This staff consisted of various categories of public officials and civil servants, distinguished by mode of recruitment, salary and benefits, and opportunity for advancement. French overseas officials remained part of French public administration, while North African officials were organized in local bureaus within each authority. Between the world wars, the French integrated the latter into the metropolitan framework. It was during this time that admission to the civil service began to pose a problem. Natives (Muslim Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians) sought equal access to civil service posts, educational equality, and quotas for admission. World War II brought a halt to recruitment, and the Vichy regime excluded some categories of the population, especially Jews, women, and Freemasons. Many reforms were adopted after the war. One established a kind of "affirmative action" in favour of Muslims, another created administrative schools, another reduced the list of positions reserved for French citizens. Another reform measure attempted to give compensation to candidates for the civil service excluded during the war. These measures were not taken to weaken the nationalists, but to enable the native population to achieve entry into a number of agencies. When independence came, cooperative agreements made it possible to maintain in North Africa a French bureaucracy charged with mitigating the expected administrative problems of the new nations.

Anthony Kirk-Greene:
The Formation of the British District Officer in Africa: An Insider's Interpretation in Narrative Mode, 281-294

This outline of a typical young man's career in Britain's post-war Colonial Service is presented in two parts, account and analysis. Part I outlines, in narrative biographical form, the family background and education of a typical middle-class boy born in the 1920s, who joined the army from school when war broke out in 1939 and volunteered to serve with Indian troops. It was not until he returned to England in 1947 to resume his university education that he decided, strongly influenced by his family connections with and his own experience of empire, that what he wanted was to serve the Crown abroad, and so he joined the Colonial Service. The second half of Part I describes the process of applying for a Colonial Service post together with the training involved. It also summarises the nature of the work in Africa, concluding with a brief description of what became of Britain's colonial administrators when in the 1960s her African colonies serially attained independence and the overseas civil servants were obliged to take early retirement and seek another job – the "second career" phenomenon. Part II sets out a number of major characteristics in the formation and practice of the typical District Commissioner, including the perceived differences between the formation and career trajectories of the British District Commissioner and the French commandant de cercle. The article closes by suggesting new research opportunities for completing the profile of "yesterday's rulers", the European colonial administrators in post-war Africa.

Harald Sippel:
Comparing Colonial Administration Methods: Native Administration in German East Africa and in German South-West Africa, 295-314

After an outline of the characteristics of central colonial administration in Berlin, the article analyses important aspects of native administration and native policy in both German colonies. The simultaneous uprisings of the African population against German rule resulted in the modification of native administration. In this respect the colonial governments used different administration methods for which a more direct or a more indirect system of native administration were the models. While the government of German East Africa expanded the system of indirect rule, the government of German South-West Africa introduced the system of direct rule in those areas where European colonists preferred to settle. The last part of the article is a comparative study which analyses why the colonial administration methods differed and what the consequences were. In German East Africa the indigenous authorities often had only marginal political influence. This enabled the government to establish colonial rule in a relatively short time with the support of Africans involved in administration, police and military service. Contrary to this situation in German South-West Africa colonial rule was relatively weak during the first two decades because of the autonomous position of the African authorities and their right to self-government. These differing initial conditions resulted in divergent colonial policies and administrative methods after the uprisings at the beginning of the 20th century. In German East Africa, the government tried to protect the interests of the African population within a paternalistic native policy because the relatively few European employers in the tropical plantation colony were always in need of large quantities of African workers. Compared to this situation, the government of German South-West Africa followed an adverse aim because it intended to segregate the African population and the European colonists extensively in order to establish a colony for numerous European settlers.

II. Varia

Vida Azimi:
Dostoyevsky and the Low Paid of Administration: Diving into the Depths, 317-327

The article is based on the three first novellas of Dostoyevsky: "Poor Folk" (1844-1846), "The Double" (1845-1846), "Mr Prokharchin" (1846), usually despised as juvenile works. Also considered are "Notes from the Underground" (1864), a key novel on the milieu of low-ranking civil servants, seen as a metaphor of the miserable and absurd human condition. Whereas Tolstoy and Gogol are rather well known for their novels characterizing high and low rank civil servants, this is not the case of Dostoyevsky whose chief novels, like "Crime and Punishment", "The Brothers Karamazov" or "The Gambler" overshadow his other creations. Still, even there, one discovers bureaucracy as the canvas of any Russian life, along with censorship. Though belonging to the famous Table of Ranks, promulgated in 1722 by Peter the Great, with 14 ranks in two hierarchies, military and civil, Dostoyevsky's bread-winners feel deeply out of rank. Their credo is "I am nothing", not only because of their impecuniosity, but as a deep sense of emptiness, and uselessness, in society and the world. This mental abyss is reinforced by the lack of living space leading to a stunted life of resignation.

Erk Volkmar Heyen:
On the Administrative Iconography of the "Social Question" in Europe: the Door as Boundary and Threshold in Painting 1850-1900, 329-350

Public administration and its societal environment communicate with each other by many means. Among the media involved, also art, especially architecture and painting, plays a role. Whereas the importance of representative paintings honouring kings, ministers and other high-ranking officials has always been obvious and thus been studied by art historians, critical paintings assessing the performance of public administration from outside are far less known. This article analyses 12 so-called realistic or naturalistic paintings from France, Italy, Russia, Hungary, England and Scandinavia. They all deal with administrative aspects of the "social question" in Europe, i.e. the negative social impact of the Industrial Revolution, especially in the second half of the 19th century. These aspects are: penal courts and police, public health, and poor aid (including primary school). The analysis focuses on a specific iconographic element: the door as a symbol of functional or social differentiation with prohibiting and, to a lesser extent, inviting effects. Thus it is shown that not only allegories of virtues play a role in administrative iconography, and that paintings do not only visualize knowledge available elsewhere but have their own important forms of inquisitiveness, observation, presentation and judgment.

III. Forum

Thomas Horstmann, Friso Ross:
Private Organisation Networks and the Transnational "Social Question" (1880-1914). Theses, Findings, Research Perspectives, 353-368

The internationalisation of social security law and administration was set in motion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the cross-border exchange of knowledge on the so-called Social Question. Apart from a certain degree of governmental readiness to cooperate with other states in addressing this matter, it was chiefly private initiative that placed transnational regulations on the agenda. Private impulses emanated from highly networked lines of communication among the urban elites, who applied themselves to the Social Question with a view to administrative and legal as well as scientific issues. These issues are examined within numerous interlinked organisational networks: in associations or other corporations, through congresses or lectures, or by means of publications in journals and series. The organisational networks were dominated by so-called super-users, who assumed manifold functions within them, but also belonged to other networks. The actors participating in this communication process had not yet evolved into experts on the basis of sophisticated disciplines, but they were indeed hommes de lettre with a keen eye for the social challenges of their time. The subject matter of their communication remained a mixture of labour law, national economics, social insurance, social hygiene, or the early beginnings of local government science. Before the outbreak of the First World War, such exchanges produced only few regulations, but they spawned numerous coalitions and quasi-administrative organisations which paved the way for the adoption of international social security regulations and social standards in post-war Europe.

Klaus Mühlhahn:
Recent Research on the Administrative History of European Colonies in the Asian-Pacific Region, 369-384

This review article aims to compare colonial administrations by the British, German, Russian and Japanese powers in East Asia and in the Southern Pacific. European colonies in East Asia were mostly colonial outposts, foreign residential areas or harbour colonies, which served as hubs for a larger informal, mostly economic, domination of the neighbouring territories often remaining under the formal rule of indigenous kings or emperors. Some of the colonies were leased for a certain time. Japanese possessions, too, fell short of being outright colonies. In Manchuria a larger territory was dominated by Japan through informal or indirect exertion of influence.
Colonial administrations differed greatly throughout East Asia and the Southern Pacific. National traditions, economic or military interests, as well as local conditions account for the differences. Russian-occupied Harbin was run and only rudimentarily administered by a private company. British administrations, too, were light, pursuing a laissez faire policy. German colonies had larger administrations in the beginning, but here, too, administrations were forced to seek partnerships with private corporations. Japan deployed indigenous administrations, and placed Japanese bureaucrats only in key positions. In general, colonial administrations in Asia and the Pacific region tended to be small-sized, pragmatic and oriented towards the promotion of free trade.

Martin Krieger:
Rule and Administration in Colonial India. A Literature Survey, 385-392

The economical and political structures of Early Modern India had been shaped by an increasing European impact on Indian Ocean trade and finally by British territorial expansion. This article gives an outline of the patterns of European expansion to India and the most eminent studies on this issue, in particular on British administration on the subcontinent. Two periods – the beginning of the 18th century, at the onset of European territorial influence, and the decades before the First World War, at its end – are highlighted. While the colonial power to a large extent tended to take local customs into account during the first period, the latter witnessed an increasing Europeanization and professionalization of administration of British India. Furthermore, the maintenance of administrative traditions stemming from ancient India, e.g. from the so-called Arthashastra, by later indigenous or foreign rulers is considered – a problem, that, however, cannot be solved by studying the relevant books due to a lack of comparative perspective.

Anschriften der Verfasser, 407-408