TNAG-0832-FCO40-1040-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1979 — Page 27

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The Right Honourable

Sir Alec Douglas-Home KT MP

etc etc etc

Belize House Belmopan Bolize

27 February 1974

Sir

1. Some future archeologist, deprived by a holocaust of written records, might well puzzle over the sudden disappearance in a brief quarter century of the British colonial empire which has yet left so remarkable an imprint on the linguistic and cultural heritage of large and widely disparate parts of the world's population. Between 1947 and 1973 something like 700 million people have moved from British rule to independence. Some may describe this as the collapse of the British Empire.

Others may see in it the suduen and final flower ing of a classic British policy which replaced Lugard's "Indirect hule" - a view

taken by Sir Andrew Cohen in his book "British Policy in Changing Africa". Many of us who had the opportunity to live through this era and play small parts in these events, perhaps lacking Cohen's percipience, failed to recognise the nature of the pro- cess in which we were participating. Starting our careers, like Sanders of the River, with a file of men carrying headloads on

safari through the bush or travelling great rivers in dugout

canoes, we came to see legislatures change in a few years from

a group of mainly white officials through various stages up to an

entirely elected parliament with Speaker and iiinisters. These

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CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL

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