Frederick Caesar Linfield - Empire Interests

Empire Interests

Linfield took a strong interest in questions relating to the British Empire and in particular to the development of the Colonial Territories. He had travelled abroad privately and had visited the British colonies in West Africa. In 1924 he was appointed as a Member of the East African Parliamentary Commission. He accompanied the other members of the Commission to Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, looking into the condition of the Colonies, their government, trade, infrastructure and social arrangements. The report of the Parliamentary Commission was published in May 1925 and various proposals for development and reform were put forward. However the Commission never questioned the colonial status quo, or the role or predominance of white settlers, endorsing their ‘civilizing mission’ and approving the continuing administration of the territories, holding them in trusteeship for the natives (sic). They also gave tacit approval for the continued development of the Highlands of Kenya as an increasingly white colony with, what they described as, “....a distinctive type of British civilisation”. Linfield also wrote a 13 page supplementary memorandum to the report in which he proposed the setting up of an Imperial Development Board. He followed this up with an article in the Contemporary Review of March 1926 on ‘Empire Development’.