From: Peter Hoffenberg <[log in to unmask]>
*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 ([log in to unmask]) or Dr.
David Clayton ([log in to unmask]) no later than 17 December 2010.
Notifications will be sent by 14 January 2011.
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