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The main theme of this erudite, complex and well-argued book is the rejection by Indigenous Hawaiians of the incorporation of their state into the Union in 1959. That was not so unusual among the F...

One can only welcome this very detailed study of French imperial application of legalized forced labour to a corner of the French Pacific. All the more so because what might have been useful as a s...

Although imperial historians concentrate on regions and periods with abundant documentation, it is worth considering how another discipline copes with the political fate of post-colonial societies whose records are not so easily accessible. The nine works reviewed below cover problems of misgovernment in new states in several regions. This article concentrates on their methods and conclusions for states in sub-Saharan Africa and more especially West Africa. Authors and editors have made considerable use of patron-client (or clientelistic) explanations in their interpretations of the aims and performance of African leaders under post-independence constitutions. Techniques of patronage have a long history; colonial rulers applied them to find useful intermediaries between administrators and African ethnic groups; and there is ample evidence for their existence in the politics of new states under the label of ‘corruption’.Despite accepted definitions of patronage, the terminology of clientelism conta...

This thesis has been seen through its publication by two knowledgeable academics, following the author's untimely death. Unusually, it has two forewords to explain the background and to extend the ...

While there is agreement that the Colonial Office continued to man an expanding empire in the nineteenth century by the technique of patronage, the reasons for the longevity of this practice, despite ‘reform’ of civil service recruitment in the early 1850s, have been little analysed. This article explores, from patronage records and private papers, the factors sustaining preferment in the gift of secretaries of state and their governors, rather than by resorting to examinations. Its conclusions are that the practice was associated with class status among senior civil servants, gradually mitigated by promotions from within colonial establishments. Patronage was burdensome to manage centrally and had to be devolved to governors, as colonial establishments expanded, creating a pool of talent among senior officials for secretaries of state to draw on. This trend is evident in establishment statistics from the late 1840s to1871. It supports the Colonial Office claim that the service was ‘professional’ accordin...

The historical context in which Fiji's Deed of Cession was formulated satisfied the necessary conditions for British annexation and included safeguards for Fijian land rights. Both Fijian and English texts implied that the incoming government would respect Fijian custom. For over 60 years, Fijians benefited from a special administrative status in territorial government, restrictions on land alienation and privileged access to departments of the colonial executive. But Fijian commoners were disadvantaged in education, and resisted payment of head taxes. The tax crisis exposed the inability of chiefs to grapple with reform of local government. Faced with electoral competition in the post-war period, Fijian leadership took refuge in a racial view of political legitimacy, derived from an interpretation of the Deed as a ‘charter’ of Fijian rights. After independence, Fijian need for reassurances about preferential treatment in a parliamentary democracy was fuelled by commoner dissatisfaction with Alliance admi...

[Extract] Geoffrey Blainey has produced a readable introduction to Cook's Endeavour voyage of 1769–1771 that is suitable for non-specialist readers. He acknowledges his debts to J.C. Beaglehole and John Dunmore, but clearly has developed his own considered interpretations of the journals of Cook and Banks. Those journals colour his account, and he quotes from them to good effect.

For pre-colonial and colonial periods, Pacific historiography is short of models for hierarchical and elementary state formation by means of alliances, brokerage and patronage. A patron–client model derived from studies grounded elsewhere can be applied to Tahiti and dependencies, the Leeward group and the Cook Islands in eastern Polynesia. The results conform to the pattern observed for other societies with competing hierarchies, respecting the use of client-brokers, incorporation of non-kin and foreigners into the service of principal lineages and, not least, in variable response to reversal of leadership by negotiation or force. Comparable, though not identical, cases can be discerned of some missionary and more usually secular, colonial management through client chieftaincies for longer or shorter periods, in which there were also possibilities for extending clientage to other classes of auxiliaries.

The contribution made by accountancy historians to the historiography of imperial over-rule underlines the need for attention to financial records. This is especially true for the example of Northern Nigeria, where Lugard's successors initiated consolidated tax assessment based on wealth and administration of emirate finances through treasuries. The economic and political results of this decentralization were expansion of personnel and emoluments, confusion over funding for central and provincial departments and financial underpinning for regional autonomy.

This work grew out of the author's interest in the Dutch East Indies before 1914. Using the broader canvas of Central and East Asia and the Pacific Islands, he has constructed a detailed narrative ...

Following the pre-war reconstruction of the brokerage for the wholesaling of rough diamonds, South Africa was much better placed to exert both a commercial and political influence on the concentrated market for a variety of domestic and outside producers.

It is not often that the historian is given the opportunity to expand and revise past work. I would like to thank the Economic History Society of Southern Africa for the opportunity to present a new version of my published account of the rise and performance of De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd, prior to 1947, against the longer perspective of the company's structure down to the 1990s. The longer perspective alters the interpretation, and it allows one to emphasise some of the more permanent features of diamond marketing and the use of company profits.

the perspective on past studies of colonisation. The long story of tragedy and triumphalism, beginning with European contact and ending with the transfer of power to a political elite, looks less convincing as a chronological framework for over 200 years of political and economic restructuring in Pacific societies.1 Con versely, studies of contemporary foreign policies by independent Pacific states since the 1960s and 1970s suffer from a lack of explanatory depth to account for the contrasting modes of behaviour and attempts at co-operation. Accounts of foreign policies remain highly personalised; and there is a sharp demarcation drawn between the external relations of'sovereign' territories, on the one hand, and the rump of associated states and dependencies in close formal relationship with New Zealand, the United States or France, on the other.2 The economic

Preservation of Indian princes under the Crown kept most states outside the jurisdiction of British India. Company precedents, rather than prescriptive regulations, influenced the role of political officers as envoys and advisers to maharajas and chieftains of client states. In practice, officers were brokers for more distant patrons located in regional presidencies — the central government's Foreign and Political Department and in the Viceroy's Council. Methods of supervision included creation of a network of clients of the resident and influencing state revenues through an appointed dewan (finance minister). Some states yielded resources through loans, railway and mineral concessions and regiments. As in all patron-client relations there was bargaining for advantage, willing loyalty, and sullen opposition. Some rulers were deposed. For others, imperial honours and improvement in the internal administration of patrimonial courts sheltered princes from the challenge of nationalist opposition. But official patronage could not secure for princes a constitutional role in an independent India.

The relationship between colonial rulers and ruled was a political one. A patron-client model has been applied to the cases surveyed to account for administration better than official prescriptions. The model is one of interaction between hierarchies. Officials constituted one status group; indigenous hierarchies constituted a subordinate form of local and regional government. Both hierarchies continued as ‘co-ordinate units’ to administer laws and courts in parallel. Relations were political, in the sense of determining access to resources, confirmation of status, and were defined by regulations. Disagreement, clash of values, compromise and rewards were part of the business of running empires with the co-operation of the governed, until new elites with different political aims had to be accommodated in government. Application of the model requires qualifications; but chiefs and clientage systems have continued after decolonization.

The kingdoms of East-Central Africa provide examples of patrimonial states utilized for the purposes of European over-rule. In societies where political clientage was ubiquitous, the Kingdom of Buganda became the archetype for a chiefly oligarchy with guaranteed status and lands, as well as a surrogate agency for administering segmentary clans in the region. It became difficult later to preserve this legacy of British administration within a unitary state, as Uganda moved towards an elected government in the 1950s. But the Kabaka of Buganda reinforced the patrimonial system of allocating offices and resources; and he became Chief of State, until his kingdom was dismantled by President Obote in 1966. Similar policies of using royal lineages to administer a subordinate peasantry were applied by German and Belgian officials in Rwanda and Burundi. The exacerbation of traditional patron client divisions by administrative patronage had disastrous consequences for relations between Tutsi and Hutu at decolonization in 1962.

In Western Africa, practices of clientage were applied to incorporate merchants for as long as they accepted the terms of trade and residence. The establishment of imperial enclaves modified this dependency. Governors and consuls worked for a wider sphere of influence through African allies, treaty states, and stipending chiefs. Reversal of status from the 1870s followed from greater reliance on treaty jurisdiction and use of force against the Asante, some Yoruba states and the Hausa–Fulani emirates. But officials had to come to terms with the chiefdoms and hierarchies they found to meet the obligations of protectorate administration. Chiefs were utilized for judicial and financial purposes as official clients. In each of the colonial states the pattern of over-rule was conditioned by local political structures. Administrative histories provide contrasting examples of the decline of chieftaincy or its empowerment, in the face of elite competition in local government and in state politics during decolonization.

In the Fiji archipelago no chief established paramount authority. From 1871, a constitutional government based on the person and influence of Seru Ebenezer Cakobau, Vunivalu of Bau, began a process of centralization under stipended provincial chiefs and settler officials, until the ‘kingdom’ was annexed by Britain with the agreement of Fijian chiefs. The first governors incorporated the chiefly hierarchy into a structure of provinces and districts, with taxes and laws under Crown Colony government. The early practice of consulting provincial chiefs was institutionalized within ‘Fijian Administration’ and the internal colonization of Viti Levu was completed with Fijian levies. Fijian leaders did not become civil servants and retained considerable initiative in accessing rents from lands and securing posts for subordinates. The whole structure of local government was called into question from the 1960s by advances in elected representation for Fijians and a large Indian population. Ethnic loyalty and deference to chiefs became an important factor in party politics, as Fiji moved towards independence in 1970 and continued to polarize politics up to the military coups of the 1980s.

From 1858, Company action in Bengal transformed, over the following half century, a maritime agency into a land power on the sub continent. The Presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay interacted with neighbouring states in ways that resulted in the subordination of their Muslim or Hindu rulers or uneasy co operation. Such relationships were never static, as treaties defining commercial privilege, payment for troops, debt recovery, were made and broken. Assignments of territory by states re-shaped internal boundaries and demarcated territories under Company control and influence. From the mid-18th century, India was imperially partitioned by using clientage to build up a network of Hindu officials and manage land revenue and tribute, and to extend by force and by alliance Company power along the upper Ganges. The symbol of this reversal of roles was the Mughal Emperor's transfer of state finances and external relations to a governor-general of ‘British India’.

The Hawaiian Kingdom was ruled by a paramount lineage through appointment of Hawaiians and Europeans to offices of state. Acceptance of laws, literacy and religion, on Hawaiian terms, maintained the primacy of the royal executive over its nobles, its ministers, and its system of island government. Foreign settlers were integrated within a Polynesian hierarchy as ‘service gentry’. Recognition by foreign powers allowed the ruling lineage to manage a Pacific state by securing a loyal civil service and control of political representation and the judiciary until the 1880s. Thereafter, royal patronage was challenged through the Legislature by a minority of lawyers, businessmen and republicans. By 1891, royal prerogatives were under threat and foreign relations depended on American good will. A militant faction overturned the monarchy in 1893, preparing the way for Congressional approval of an illegal settler government, annexation and Territorial status. But patronage politics continued into the 1930s under the influence of business corporations and Republican Executives.

By contrast with British attempts to ‘govern through the governors’ in Egypt, the French Protectorate Government of Morocco exercised power through ministries which excluded Moroccan officials. The Sultanate provided little more than legitimacy for the regime. Outside the coastal zone, the French enlisted traditional caids (chieftains) in Central Morocco and the chieftains of the Rif. The Sultanate, although without executive power, maintained a covert support for nationalist opposition and the Istiqlal party from 1944. Consequently, the restoration of King Muhammed ben Yussuf in 1955 marked a period of French concessions to demands for independence led by the monarch. Morocco left the French Union the following year with a Constitution fashioned by the royal house. The Sultanate preserved the balance between the patrimonial rule of a leader of the Islamic community and secular control over ministers, police and army, in a system that placed a high value on allegiance and loyalty, in return for redress of grievances.

In South Africa, there are some significant examples of alliance and imperial patronage by co-optation of Zulu chiefdoms for warfare, and in using client chiefs to bring about the downfall of King Cetschwayo in 1883. Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland, as High Commission territories, became imperial clients under traditional chiefs and assemblies, forming their own patron parties in the 1960s to protect traditional lineages that predominated over small educated elites in states that became nominally independent, 1965-66. Thus, in the former High Commission territories the politics of patronage triumphed over constitutional blueprints. There is also evidence that neo-traditonal forms of clientage have survived among Xhosa communities and in peri-urban slums in South Africa.

This introductory chapter examines the terminology of subordination including ‘paramountcy’, ‘protection’, ‘subsidiary alliance’, ‘indirect rule’, and ‘collaboration’, drawn mainly from British experience in India and Africa. The advantages of adopting a patron-client model derived from anthropological work on clientage in segmentary societies and patrimonial states are contrasted with older terms in imperial history. Semantic debate aside, it became clear by the 1980s that a bridge between administrative history and the dynamics of political clientage was already available in the case of Indian history to explain the transformation of the Indian Mughal empire and its successor states under pressure from Europeans. Indian historiography has moved between two images of empire — British and Indian — towards a greater synthesis with less on justification and administrative categories and more on the exercise of power at lower levels. That example can be applied elsewhere in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.

A centralized state was constructed in Tonga by a warrior chief of a maximal lineage. From 1845, through war, title succession, and adroit patronage of Wesleyan missionary converts, Taufa'ahau emerged in the manner of Kamehameha in Hawai'i as a territorial paramount by descent and achievement as King George Tupou I. New and old institutions were combined in the Tongan Constitution of 1875; and for the first time secular and religious titles were held by one high chief. His successors warded off a series of interventions by Fiji's governors, but the Colonial Office acknowledged Tonga's autonomy as a sovereign state from 1911. Since then, foreign settlement and foreign over-rule have been kept at bay by a patrimonial state that has managed to satisfy its nobility and office-holders and retain the loyalty of most Tongans.

In ‘Indian’ India, older techniques won political influence and access to resources for the governments of Madras, Bombay and Surat in Awadh, the Carnatic, the Maratha Deccan, and the states of South India. Military alliances secured Mysore, Travancore, Malabar, and the Coromandel. The practice of stationing Company troops in return for tribute spread. Recovery of debts from subordinate princes resembled a gigantic protection racket in the minor principalities, where rulers were guaranteed subordinate status at a price. When the Maratha chiefdoms refused to pay, military campaigns and treaties dismantled their empire in central India and replaced it with a Company paramountcy that left most of the rulers in Maharashtra and the Punjab under control without annexation. Defining the terms of that paramount control over some six hundred major and minor states in a good third of India occupied the central and provincial governments of the Company and the Raj for the rest of the 19th century.

English contact with India through the East India Company made commercial agents dependent on the patronage of Mughal authorities for the privileges of trade and settlement in restricted enclaves at Surat, Bombay, Madras, and in Bengal. As the Mughal patrimonial empire declined, political relations with the princes of successor states turned on the potential for assistance from a maritime power and the drain on state revenues arising from fiscal and trade concessions to official and private factors. The Company could be supportive or subversive. Fortification of posts affording protection and jurisdiction created beneficiaries among Indian service gentry. By internal trading operations the Company enlisted clients and created a potential cause of local conflict by abuse of privileges in Bengal through open conflict with French factors from the 1740s, when both sides competed in a very ‘Asiatic manner’.