Tag Archives: African and Commonwealth Studies

The Elspeth Huxley catalogues are now online

Black and white portrait of Elspeth Huxley as a young woman, 1935, held by the National Portrait Gallery, UK

Elspeth Josceline Huxley (née Grant), 3 May 1935
by Bassano Ltd, half-plate glass negative
NPG x26719, © National Portrait Gallery, London

The three catalogues covering the Elspeth Huxley archive are now online [1] [2] [3].

Elspeth Josceline Huxley (née Grant) (1907-1997), an author and journalist who wrote extensively about Kenya and East Africa, was raised on her parents’ struggling coffee farm 30 miles from Nairobi. Educated mainly at home (except for a short stint at an English boarding school before she managed to get herself expelled) she spent her youth in Kenya but returned to England to study for an agriculture diploma at Reading University and then at Cornell in the United States. She never lived in Kenya again but the country continued to occupy her and she visited often and travelled widely across Africa and the rest of the world with her husband, Gervas Huxley, who established the International Tea Marketing Expansion board. They married in 1931 while she was working as a press officer, and Huxley continued to write to earn money.

Her first major commission was the biography of Hugh Cholmondeley, a leader of the European settlers in Kenya. White Man’s Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya (1935) became a definitive history from the settlers’ point of view.  Following this, Huxley stayed briefly on the Kikuyu reserve and out of this experience came her first novel, Red Strangers (1937), about the Kikuyu experience of white settlement of Kenya. She went on to write numerous detective novels including 1938’s Murder on Safari, as well as a stream of journalism on topics including Africa, farming and environmental issues. From the 1950s to the 1980s Huxley published further works about Kenya including a history of the Kenya Farmer’s Association, Out in the Midday Sun: my Kenya (1985) which was an edited collection of tales from European settlers, travel accounts and analyses of East Africa, and her semi-autobiographical, and most popular, works The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) and The Mottled Lizard (1962). Flame Trees of Thika was adapted for television in 1981. Huxley also wrote biographies of explorers and pioneers including David Livingstone and Florence Nightingale and spent time on commissions relating to Africa including a tour of central Africa from 1959-1960 as an independent member of the Monckton commission to advise on that region.

Her archive includes correspondence and diaries as well as working notes and research for numerous books including White Man’s Country and her well-reviewed economic and social analysis of British East Africa The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: A Journey Through East Africa (1948).

For further information see the Elspeth Huxley article in the Dictionary of National Biography.

The Englishwoman’s Guide to Living in the Commonwealth

There is a great deal of focus on the lives and work of the officers of Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service and civil contractors working abroad. Here at the Bodleian in our Commonwealth and African collections researchers often consult our many official and personal papers including those of the Overseas Service Pensioners’ Association.

But what about the wives and children that came with them? They had to deal with living in a foreign country with different customs, languages and climates. Many of them, at least initially, had no work routine to settle into or familiar faces to rely on.

Think for a minute of the thousand little things in your everyday life that you take for granted. Dealing with them in another land—even in a large metropolitan city (which many of them were not posted to)—could be confusing enough. For those who moved to a provincial outpost or a small island it was even more of a culture shock.

House and scenes from daily life in the Seychelles

Photo of a WCS member’s house and from her daily life in the Seychelles.

Take something as basic as buying common household goods: Where do you find needle and thread? Do they even have oats here? Can you buy beef? Often you needed to find a local substitute and even if they were available it might be packaged different, you might be looking in the wrong shop or you can’t find the words to describe something that seems so obvious to you. This could end up being an exercise in frustration where you found yourself wandering aimlessly for hours and returning empty handed.

WCS promotional leaflet with a stylized red sun inset with a globe.

WCS promotional leaflet.

Enter the Women’s Corona Society (WCS).

Most people will not have heard of it, but to the emigrating Englishwoman it was a lifeline. They gave courses on food, childcare, and health as well as providing a support network for the wives and families of those who were working abroad. It could be a lonely life with the husband away at work all day and lot of leisure time on your hands.

6 WCS educational pamphlets.

A selection of leaflets for the various courses on offer to their members.

The WCS provided courses to educate the new arrival on living overseas, charities to be volunteers in, visits and outings to familiarise them with the local area and people, social gatherings to relax and meet others in the society etc.

WCS autumn programme featuring doctors and experts speaking on various subjects.

WCS autumn programme.

A schedule of autumn courses shows the range of topics covered from the practical to the educational with doctors, officials and other experts speaking on ‘Malaria and Other Insects Borne Diseases’ to ‘Nature Studies Overseas’ to ‘Beauty round the World’.

One of the WCS members paints an evocative picture of what a prospective newcomer could expect upon arrival.

‘Often, on arrival, a family may live for a while in a hotel – and this can sometimes be a lonely start for a wife whose husband is out at work all day and she knows no one to talk to.’

And for ‘families who go straight into their own homes, the facilities of the Corona “Survival Basket” are often very welcome until their own luggage arrives.’

 

A selection of invitations for London members..

A selection of invitations for London members.

It was not just with the practical aspects of living overseas that WCS helped with. One of the most important things they provided was a social network.

This was fostered by theatre parties, afternoon teas, and charity events.

It wasn’t only a resource and a society for when you were abroad though. They also had a thriving social scene around their London headquarters; as shown by the selection of invitations to the right.

Whether their husbands’ tours of duty were done and they had to reintegrate to British life, or they were Commonwealth citizens moving to the UK for the first time, the WCS was equally there to help them find their feet as well.

Sometimes for returning expats the UK was the most foreign land of all when your friends, family and life had moved on without you.

New catalogue: Robert Perceval Armitage Archive

The second half of the catalogue of Robert Perceval Armitage is now online.

armitage

Sir Robert Perceval Armitage.

Sir Robert Perceval Armitage (1906–1990), colonial governor, was the governor of both Cyprus and Nyasaland during times of dramatic and turbulent change. When he first embarked on his career in the colonial services, he could not possibly have imagined the rise of nationalism and violent political activism that would characterise his latter days.

Armitage read history at New College, Oxford and took the tropical African services course (1928-1929) before posting to the Nairobi secretariat. There, he swiftly ascended the ranks to administrative secretary and was appointed MBE in 1944. He then transferred to the Gold Coast in 1948 as financial secretary and later minister of finance in Kwame Nkrumah’s cabinet. He filled his post ably and well; expanding the government’s revenue and expenditure threefold whilst doubling imports/exports. He was appointed CMG in 1951 and promoted KCMG in 1954.

With his excellent service record in Kenya and because no good deed goes unpunished, he was appointed governor of Cyprus along with his KCMG. His task was to convince Cyprus to accept a constitution that excluded the possibility of self-determination amidst escalating Greek demands for sovereignty (enosis), increased friction between Greeks and Turks, and Britain’s transfer of its Middle East military headquarters from Suez to Cyprus.

Report on the Central African Federation including a handwritten reply by Sir Roy Welensky inside.

Report on the Central African Federation including a handwritten reply by Sir Roy Welensky inside.

Pro-enosis demonstrations were escalating, guerrilla operations by EOKA were killing Turkish Cypriots and bombing attempts were being made on Armitage himself. By then the British government had changed its stance on intervention and Harold Macmillan, foreign secretary, invited both Greece and Turkey to discuss Middle East affairs. The discussions were inconclusive and rioting and terrorism followed. By September 1955 Armitage was out and military governor John Harding installed in his place.

Armitage was transferred to the governorship of Nyasaland where he soon faced a fresh set of troubles. In 1953 Britain had established the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (also known as the Central African Federation), comprised of the colony of Southern Rhodesia and the territories of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Black Africans of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland opposed the federation, fearing the influence of Southern Rhodesian racial policies (apartheid). Armitage was tasked with winning over the Africans to federation.

Little progress was made and the Nyasaland African Congress, led by Hastings Banda, was stepping up agitation. On 3rd March 1959 a state of emergency was declared and Banda along with 1300 of his followers was detained. Afterwards the Devlin Commission was appointed to determine whether the declaration of emergency and suppression of dissent was justified. Their findings were highly controversial as it found while the declaration was justified the suppression of dissent was ‘excessive’. The state of affairs in Nyasaland led to the appointment of the Monckton commission in 1960 to help determine the future of the Central African Federation.

Banda was released in April 1960 over Armitage’s objections and the state of emergency was lifted in June, soon to be followed by a new constitution in August that gave the Malawi Congress Party (successor to the NAC) a large majority in the legislature and dominating presence in the executive council. Armitage tied up his affairs and retired to Dorset in 1961, giving much over much of his time to charitable organisations and lecturing.

Playbill for Goody Two Shoes: a pantomime.

Playbill for Goody Two Shoes: a pantomime.

From the juxtaposition of amateur playbills in the midst of national unrest to the urgency of confidential telegrams whilst a suspected terrorist plot is afoot; his papers offer a fascinating glimpse into the public and private life of a colonial administrator in the midst of social change. They include correspondence with notable British and African politicians, including: Roy Welensky, Alan Lennox-Boyd and Hastings Banda.

See also the Dictionary of National Biography entry for Armitage; Retreat from empire: Sir Robert Armitage in Africa and Cyprus by Colin Baker (1998); and the Library’s other Armitage archival holdings.