Richard C. Thurnwald, The Crisis of Imperialism in East Africa and Elsewhere (1936)

Richard C. Thurnwald’s article interprets imperialism through the longer history of cultural contact, concentrating on East Africa while drawing comparisons with other colonial societies. Prompted by Howard University’s Second Annual Conference on World Problems, it asks how imperialism can be in crisis when territorial conquest continues:

IT MAY sound queer to speak of a crisis of imperialism while Mussolini conquers Ethiopia and Japan advances in Manchuria, Mongolia, and China. But has any turning point, any moment of danger or suspense appeared in the imperialism of to-day?

The apparent contradiction organizes the argument. Imperial expansion generates forces that challenge its authority, notably an educated intelligentsia that uses European intellectual resources to demand independence. For Thurnwald, however, political emancipation cannot by itself resolve the economic and cultural transformations produced by colonial contact.

He proposes to separate scientific diagnosis from partisan judgment:

In order to do so we should try to look upon the phenomenon of imperialism and its implications as processes of natural history.

This methodological stance yields a processual account of change, but also exposes the article’s paternalistic assumptions. Thurnwald counters criticism of European rule with references to precolonial warfare, slavery, and despotism. He questions African readiness for independence while crediting colonial institutions with educational opportunities. His rhetorical challenge to educated critics makes the asymmetry particularly clear:

Do they not recall being educated in schools instituted and, in most cases, financed by the whites?

The question treats education as a benefit that complicates opposition to foreign authority. Yet Thurnwald also criticizes European contempt, exploitation, and schooling designed to produce obedient subordinates. Education thus becomes both an instrument of domination and a source of resistance. African intellectuals reject European leadership while adopting forms of knowledge that alter their relations to inherited institutions.

Rather than describing contact as a single clash, Thurnwald follows successive stages of trade, missionary activity, political control, imitation, disillusionment, and cultural self-assertion. Idealized images operate on both sides: European romanticism about African life finds a counterpart in African admiration for Europe, subsequently eroded by exploitation. Neither the restoration of an unchanged past nor straightforward assimilation offers an adequate outcome. Cultural reconstruction requires selecting and transforming inherited and acquired elements.

The article’s strongest analysis concerns the institutional consequences of colonial rule. Chiefs become subordinate administrative officials; missions undermine ancestor worship and its connections with kinship; teachers, preachers, clerks, and artisans constitute new social strata. Wages, taxation, cash crops, and imported goods connect rural households to wider markets. Money and administrative appointment redistribute prestige, while individualization weakens clan obligations and changes marriage arrangements. Dependence on distant prices and financial centers persists beyond immediate encounters with Europeans.

Thurnwald acknowledges the profound sacrifice of independence concealed by celebrations of colonial peace. Nevertheless, he treats white domination as one historically limited form of a broader cultural process. This distinction helps explain why sovereignty alone would not remove economic dependence or settle questions of education and identity. It also risks naturalizing colonial expansion by subordinating coercion to a generalized history of contact.

The conclusion considers non-cooperation and revolutionary responses without treating either as a sufficient solution. Thurnwald favors greater African initiative in education, economics, and administration, while retaining an emphasis on patience and possible European assistance. Educators should abandon assimilation, but cannot assume that modern science leaves ancestral religious authority unchanged. His prospective order combines shared scientific and technical achievements with distinct cultural development. The article’s central tension remains the conjunction of support for cultural autonomy with a hierarchical conception of historical development: liberation matters, but the reconstruction of social life remains an enduring task beyond it.