Abstract
This thesis explores British strategies for the post-war development of new overseas universities, mainly focusing on the activities of the Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies (IUC, later Overseas) from 1942 to 1981. The Council’s role was to facilitate the foundation of universities in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean and their academic growth. The idea of ‘partnership’ between British and overseas universities became an important IUC slogan; the term also reflected the rhetoric of Britain’s post-war imperial policy.This thesis examines multiple aspects of British imperial history such as decolonisation, development and transnational networks. It addresses the following questions: how a partnership between Britain and its former colonies to establish new universities was cemented and loosened; who the main actors were in conducting British strategies for new universities; and how the IUC contributed to enhancing the bond of British and Commonwealth universities. This research goes beyond the existing literature on the IUC (principally an official history) to incorporate discussions of British expatriate staff’s activities on the spot, African and Caribbean
universities’ responses to British cultural and educational imperialism, and American foundations’ involvements in the development of new universities.
By utilising various archival sources from Barbados, Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and the United States, this thesis explores the story of shaping and phasing out the university ‘partnership’ between British and overseas universities over six chapters. The period covered by these is divided into two parts: the first discusses the colonial era; and the second the post-colonial. However, each chapter sometimes across the line between the colonial and postcolonial where this is helpful for better understanding particular themes.
The first three chapters focus on the process of the scheme of Special Relations between the University of London and overseas colleges, with three case studies of the University Colleges of the Gold Coast in current Ghana, Ibadan in Nigeria and the West Indies mainly in Jamaica. While all British universities supported the IUC’s service, the UoL played the chief role in exporting a British university model to overseas universities. The system of awarding UoL’s degrees to local students was successful in shaping a ‘university partnership’.
The last three chapters discuss the postcolonial activities of the IUC, the UoL, the Universities of Ghana, Ibadan and the West Indies, and American foundations. It sheds light on decolonising the curriculum and cultures of British, African, and Caribbean universities. The discussion of role played by American foundations reveals the IUC’s ambivalent attitude towards Anglo-American collaboration as it sought to maintain Britain’s hegemony over overseas universities. Finally, it alludes to the IUC’s ongoing service and institutional decline in the 1970s and its legacies in the international development of universities.
This thesis ultimately argues that Britain’s distinctive strategies for overseas universities, through the IUC’s flexible service, contributed to maintaining the British cultural influence in the former colonies and strengthening the bond of the British academic world, especially supported by the active engagements of African, Caribbean, and British universities for their mutual needs.
| Date of Award | 1 Nov 2022 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Sarah Stockwell (Supervisor) & Alana Harris (Supervisor) |