The War and the Mandates System

The First World War, fought between 1914 and 1918, marked an important turning point in the history of the tropical African territories. Before the war these colonies had been backwaters, each connected with the mainstream of world events only through the single channel linking it to one or another of the colonial powers. There had been little overall policy. Each colony had been thought of as a separate problem, and mainly as a problem of economic self-support. After the war, things moved faster. Most African colonies were by now sufficiently established to be able to think of more than mere survival. Their revenues were beginning to show modest surpluses over the bare cost of law and order. Colonial governments were able for the first time to contemplate expenditure on education, on health, on agricultural and veterinary services, and on economic development of various kinds. After the war, too, colonial powers started to take their colonial responsibilities more seriously. They tried to work out consistent policies for the African colonies. They developed within their colonial ministries important specialist departments and advisory services designed to assist all the colonial governments under their control. This increasing centralisation did much to break down the previous isolation of individual territories.

The war also made the colonial powers somewhat responsible to international opinion. The former German colonies were divided among the victor nations.