T h e t e r m ‘colony’ originally meant a settlement of immigrants in a foreign land. In the political sense, a colony is either 

a settlement of the subjects of a nation or state beyond its own 

frontiers; or a territorial unit geographically separated from it, 

but owing allegiance to it. In modern colonial history, two types 

of colonies have grown up, owing in the m ain to climatic conditions. There is the ‘settlement 5 colony in which climate and 

geographical environment have favoured the establishment of 

sizeable European com m unities; while the others, regarded 

formerly, before the discovery of prophylactic drugs and the 

clearance of jungles, as inimical to the health of Europeans, 

usually gathered relatively small groups of business men, 

administrators, soldiers and missionaries, all of whom lived in an 

environment quite different from that of the ‘m other’ country.

These two different forms of colony have been responsible for 

the evolution of different systems of government. In fact, there 

has been no uniform system of colonial government in Africa. 

The pattern has varied according to the policy and traditions of 

the different colonial powers, as well as to the existence and size 

of a settler community.

France, the colonial power which ruled over the largest area 

of territory in Africa, followed a policy of assimilation aim ed at 

producing an elite class. She hoped by introducing a favoured 

class of Africans to French culture and civilization and raising 

them to the status of Frenchmen, to avoid the rise of African 

nationalism in the territories under her rule. The class of elites, 

however, always rem aimed relatively small, and outside it the 

bulk of the Africans rem aimed ‘subjects’, to be exploited and 

m all treated at the will of on-the-spot Frenchman en, both high and low

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Tijani Musah

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