Development and Empire, 1929-1962

Development and Empire, 1929-1962

Humanities Research Centre, Univerity of York

1 - 2 July 2011

A two-day conference bringing together scholars based in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America to share knowledge and ideas about British aid-assisted colonial development in the mid twentieth century.

Speakers: Paul Greenough, Jordanna Bailkin, Barbara Bush, David Clover, Billy Frank, Joseph Hodge, Gerald Hödl, Leigh Gardner, Michael Jennings, Margaret Jones, Gerold Krozewski, Edward Hamilton, Lucy McCann, Zachary D. Poppel and Uyilawa Usuanlele.

Today the history of British aid-assisted colonial development from the early to mid twentieth century is a vibrant area of research. This conference will bring together scholars from around the world who work in this area to exchange knowledge and ideas.

Over two days a series of panels will focus on emerging themes and topics such as health and development, regional experiences and metropolitian perspectives. Papers presented by established scholars and early career researchers will consider the meanings of aid-assisted development, its many practices, and its multiple short- and long-term effects. Besides academic papers, the conference will include workshops on archival sources in the UK on colonial development and a round-table on the implications of the papers presented for development policy today.

A keynote address will be given by Professor Paul Greenough (University of Ohio), a leading expert on the social and environmental history of the modern India, on Friday 1 July. He will also deliver a Public Lecture on the eve of the conference, 30 June, entitled "Natural Disasters in Social Theory and South Asia Practice" which is open to all conference delegates.

The conference will be held at the Humanities Research Centre (Berrick Saul Building), University of York. This campus-based venue is a 20-minute bus journey from York train station and a 10-minute bus journey from the centre of York.

The conference is supported by the Department of History and is organised by its British Empire research cluster. Additional financial support has been provided by the Economic History Society, the Wellcome Trust, the Centre for Modern Studies, University of York, and the British Society of the History of Science.

For information on registration and a provisional programme, see the conference website

Call for Papers - Development and Empire, 1929-1962

Call for Papers

Development and Empire, 1929-1962

University of York (UK)

Saturday, 2 July 2011

The global foreign aid budget, which has risen significantly in the first decade of the twenty-first century, is controversial. Although aid has the potential to facilitate capital formation and knowledge transfer, the development economics literature divides into optimists and pessimists, who argue that aid is allocated ineffectively with pernicious effects on long term growth. Despite a voluminous literature on aid, dating back over half a century, historians have only made fleeting contributions to these debates. Historians of the British Empire, however, have access to excellent data that can provide useful insights.

British aid policy dates back to the 1929 Colonial Development Act (CDA), which set up a Colonial Development Fund (CDF) for development projects. Before then, infrastructure projects were financed using international loan finance supplemented by colonial public expenditure. In 1940, the CDA was succeeded by the Colonial Development and Welfare Act (CDWA), which included the development of social services and increased the sum in the CDF from £1 million to £5 million. Official accounts and specialists academic studies have confirmed that British policy was affected by geo-strategic and domestic macro-economic concerns and that its implementation was constrained by the contingencies imposed by post-war austerity. With some notable exceptions there have been far fewer studies of how aid was actually used within colonies.

This one-day conference will extend the literatures on colonialism and development by: tracing the origins of British aid policy; exploring metropolitan and colonial political economies of aid policy during the epoch of decolonisation; considering the impact of aid in British dependent territories; and evaluating how aid policy affected the meanings given to ‘development’.

We are seeking proposals for a 20-minute paper on British colonies in South East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean that will consider one or more of the following questions:

• How did local bureaucrats, business and other social elites respond to the opportunities provided by an augmented aid budget?

• Did colonial elites collaborate or compete? How were colonial agendas set?

• How did financial-cum-institutional constraints as administrated by the British Treasury affect public capital formation in London and overseas?

• How did scarcities affecting international, British and colonial product markets, and discriminatory imperial commercial policies, affect the allocation and expenditure of aid?

• How was aid administered on the ground: by whom; for whom; and with what effects?

We may offer a limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries to assist postgraduate presenters with registration and travel costs. Those seeking a bursary should state so on their submission.

Submission:

Proposals must include the following:

- Title

- Summary of proposal of maximum 250 words

- 1 page c.v. including author’s name, address, email , institutional affiliation

All proposals must be sent to Dr. Henrice Altink (ha501@york.ac.uk) or Dr. David Clayton (dwc1@york.ac.uk) no later than 17 December 2010. Notifications will be sent by 14 January 2011.