Radical social scientists and third-world scholars have accused traditional social scientists, especially social anthropologists, of failing to study the colonial milieu in which a majority of its field studies have been conducted (cf. Asad, 1975; Lewis, 1973 for examples). There are notable exceptions to that neglect, examples which partisan radicals fail to cite. Among those exceptions are Morris's (1968) study of Asians in East Africa, Ajayi's (1965) study of missionaries in Nigeria, Beidelman's (1974) call to study up in which he uses a Weberian framework in order to understand expatriates in Africa, and Heussler's (1968) study of the British in Northern Nigeria (cf. also Oberg, 1972; Pitt, 1976; Jones, 1974; Reining, 1966; Salamone, 1974, 1977, and 1978; Savishinsky, 1972; Schapera, 1958; Stavenhagen, 1977; and Tonkinson, 1974 for a few such works).

Still, it remains true that social scientists have tended, by and large, to neglect the study of colonial society. This relative neglect entails both serious theoretical and methodological consequences for the social sciences, for it both narrows the range of societies in its comparative repertoire and masks a source of systematic bias. After all, expatriate societies are but one transform of plural societies, one possible manifestation of deeper underlying structural principles. Unfortunately, as Beidelman (1974: 235-36) correctly indicates, those segments of society closest to the anthropologist did not capture his wonder. Neither were they perceived as fit subjects for analysis.

The psychology of colonialism is a subject which has received mostly speculative treatment in the form of large generalizations derived from suggestive but unsystematic observations. Stimulating as such contributions can be, there is a need for close empirical studies, conducted so far as possible without theoretical bias, of the reactions of European colonialists to those who were being colonized. It will undoubtedly happen that in the course of such detailed studies many easy assumptions will have to be discarded and grand theories dismantled. What follows is offered as a tentative contribution to a more complex appreciation of what went on in the minds of Europeans when they found themselves in intimate contact with an African people.

The subject of this paper is British attitudes toward the Masai as they were expressed in the context of administration. The Masai were chosen because there is a large body of conventional wisdom on the subject of British attitudes toward them which invites critical analysis. Stated crudely, the conventional belief, which has been pressed into service many times to explain why the Masai hardly changed at all during the half century of British rule, is that the British were so charmed by them that they hated to see them enter the twentieth century. A number of social scientists have considered the phenomenon of Masai resistance to change (Merrill, 1960; Gulliver, 1969; Tignor, 1976) and they have all concluded that there are more powerful reasons for it than the attitudes of administrators; but no one has investigated systematically what these attitudes were and how they were related to administrative behavior. It is simply assumed that the Masai were favorites of the British, and the relation of attitudes to action seems to require no further elucidation. A glance at the evidence shows that things were not so simple. A range of attitudes toward the Masai existed among administrators—though the modal response was certainly positive rather than negative—and the relation of attitudes to the policies recommended or pursued was not straightforward. Without making exaggerated claims for the kind of exercise which follows, it can be argued that closer scrutiny is warranted, at the very least to clear away accumulated misconceptions. At this local level, where the human characteristics of administrators stand out against a rather remote background of metropolitan policymaking, a social psychologist can perhaps contribute a useful perspective on the written records and oral traditions of those involved.

In this article it shall be argued that the Zambian government's decision to nationalize its only major industry—large international copper companies—undermined the government's major development objectives toward the mining industry. By taking majority ownership of the copper corporations, the government inadvertently modified its original policy objectives and shifted toward the policy objectives of the copper companies. The force behind the government's impetus for change in its policy orientation did not come from Zambian administrators who supposedly became bourgeois, nor did it develop as a result of an increase in the power of the mining companies. Rather the government's participation in the companies institutionally linked governmental policy criteria with the criteria in use by the mining corporations, measured more by profit margins and less by the social criteria of development and public welfare.

Political leaders apparently thought that they could achieve their developmental goals through their control of the copper companies and could thus avoid making major public investments to achieve those goals. Leaders appeared to see the government's ownership of the copper companies as being a relatively cost free way to develop the country. Not only did this prove impossible, however, but when the copper industry experienced a financial crisis after 1975, the government as the major owner had to bear the financial burden of supporting the multinational corporations. One consequence of Zambia's nationalization of the copper industry, therefore, was to place the country deeply into debt simply to sustain the operations of a financially troubled international industry. This had the effect of forcing the government to suspend all major new development projects and to postpone its development plans for the country.

The relative distribution of education is linked with relative social and economic development among nations and inter-regionally within the same country (Denison, 1962). Evidence from comparative studies shows that intra-national variation is usually greater than inter-national variations (Gould, 1971: 82-89) and tends to intensify among lower level political formations (Gould, 1972: 65-74).

Historical evidence indicates that the educational advantages of some regions are derived from proximity to the coast and nodal centres of growth and favorable climatic conditions conducive to missionary activities (McCaskie, 1972: 30-35). Recent studies in Africa have shown that educational development is related to sets of economic variables and modernization processes. Among these are urbanization and trade, migration and European settlement, the development of transportation network (Soja, 1968), the spread of cash crops, and emergence of new occupational structures which constitute the preconditions for the demand and diffusion of education (Foster, 1966; Brownstein, 1972). These social and economic factors, at the regional and subregional levels, exert influences that give rise to variations in enrollment at the different educational levels.

With the growing awareness of the importance of the development of human capital (Becker, 1975; Schultz, 1961: 1-17; Mincer, 1970: 1-26) and the potential political dangers when educational inequalities are linked with ethnic differentials (Diejomaoh, 1972: 318-363), public policy has become an important factor in the determination of regional distribution of education.

This paper attempts to establish the relationship between the varying regional education attainment and quantifiable regional economic, social, and locational characteristics as well as instruments of public policy. The importance of these factors over time, with a view of isolating the most potent in the attainment of the highest educational objectives, will be examined.

The countries of West Africa are currently undergoing massive urbanward migration. The process of growth and development which these countries have experienced in the colonial and post-colonial periods has been characterized by what geographers term the process of areal differentiation. In a spatial sense, employment opportunities and developmental changes have been extremely concentrated in a few areas, especially the cities; the rural areas, which dominate both in terms of population numbers and areal extent, have either undergone little growth or have felt the backwash effects of development elsewhere (Hirshman, 1958; Myrdal, 1957). This pattern has been variously described by geographers in terms of a “core and dependent periphery” (Friedman, 1966), “islands of development” (Hance et al., 1961), and “modernization surfaces” (Gould, 1970; Riddell, 1970; Soja, 1968). The essential geographic characteristic has been a spatial imbalance in both economic and welfare opportunities within these countries; employment and income opportunities, schools, health facilities, and clean piped water all tend to be concentrated in urban places, especially in the dominant primate cities. In this context, people, by moving to urban centers are making very rational decisions in the face of sharp and mounting urban-rural differentials and strongly limited rural opportunities.

The result of this process may be seen in the major cities of the region; everywhere the primate cities are increasing in size at incredible rates, so incredible that employment growth has been far outstripped by the expansion in urban population numbers. The outcome is what a recent issue of New African (October, 1978: 77) has termed “the inexorable rise of the unemployed.”