Sentinels of empire: The British Colonial Administrative Service, 1919-1954

By the middle of the 20th Century the British colonial Empire encompassed an area of just under two million square miles, covering over 50 territories with a total population of 77 million. It was administered by an elite body of less than 2,000 men known as the Colonial Administrative Service (CAS).; Sentinels of Empire is a comprehensive reappraisal of the Colonial Administrative Service and the British colonial administrator. It examines in detail his family, school and university background, as well as his motives for joining the Colonial Service and his vision when he applied to the Service, It is also a study of the recruitment process for the CAS, and the ideas and philosophy of the men responsible for selecting colonial officers: Sir Ralph Furse, Sir Charles Jeffries and Captain Francis Newbolt.; The dissertation draws heavily upon public and private papers, personal correspondence between the author and over 80 former colonial officers, and upon privileged access to the HMOCS Data Project, the most comprehensive and detailed collection of biographical data on the Colonial Service ever compiled.; The dissertation challenges commonly held stereotypes of the British District Officer and rejects the portrait painted by Robert Heussler of the colonial administrator as an upper-class country gentleman, in his highly influential 1963 study of the Colonial Service, Yesterday's Rulers . The popular image of the colonial administrator as an aristocratic Old Etonian lording it over the ‘natives’ in colonial Africa, much as he would have done over the traditional '‘lower orders’ at home, is a highly romanticised fiction which bore little relation to reality.; Sentinels of Empire argues that the Colonial Administrative Service was a remarkably diverse body in terms of its social background, and was a testament not to social division in inter-war and early-post-war Britain but an illustration of the open nature of British society during this period.