Catalogue description Colonial Office: Lord Hailey: Papers

Arranged by the following countries: Gambia, Gold Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Sierra Leone, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar.

In 1941, following journeys undertaken in 1939 and 1940, Lord Hailey wrote a report on the working of the systems of local rule in Africa which was issued for official use under the title of Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa. In 1947 he was asked to update the report. Because his earlier enquiries had been restricted by war conditions, and because he believed that the changes made in the interval had in some cases involved issues not merely of practice but of policy, Hailey decided that an entirely new report was required and in 1950 his five-volume Native Administration in the British African Territories was published.

In his preface Hailey noted that the new report '... is more limited in scope, in that it is confined to matters relating directly to the agencies employed for administrative purposes in local rule, including the creation of institutions of local government, and it refers only indirectly to political or constitutional developments. It is on the other hand more comprehensive, in so far that it embodies a detailed statement of the working of the system adopted in each of the Provincial units comprised in the ten Colonial territories concerned. It gives detailed information on the same scale regarding the procedure for the administration of justice through the native tribunals, and examines the evidence available of changes in the African law and custom which regulates the system of landholding.'