Fatma Mansur - Process of Independence

PROCESS OF INDEPENDENCE

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

In 18 Volumes

PROCESS OF INDEPENDENCE

by

FATMA MANSUR

foreword by

A. H. HANSON

First published in 1962

by Routledge

Reprinted 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor G Francis Grozlp

1962 Fatma Mansur

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

Process of Independence

ISBN 0-415-17557-7

Political Sociology: 18 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17820-7

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

FOREWORD

by A. H. Hanson

WE ARE BY NOW fairly well-equipped with accounts oi the acquisition ol independence by former colonial countries. These have provided the author of the present work with the bulk of her factual material. What we lack are comparative studies which endeavour to find the elements common to the various stories and to bring to bear on the whole complex process the light of political sociology. This is the gap that Dr Mansur, among others, is attempting to fill. It is a hazardous task, and no one would claimleast of all the authorthat it is here done to perfection. Her main accomplishment, I believe, is to suggest a number of fruitful hypotheses and to map out a few of the areas in which further inquiries might be profitably pursued. This in itself gives the work a pioneering quality, and I am sure that its author will be more than content if it provokes reflection and stimulates research.

There is another sense in which this book is dktinguished. Dr Mansur, aIthough not acquainted at first hand with all the countries whose political evolutions she describes, is writing as an insider. As a Turk, she has been part of a socio-economic order in many respects similar to those which are here analysed and has witnessed political processes analogous to those operating in the former colonial countries; for it must be remembered, as Sir Harry Luke has pointed out, that the Atatiirk revolution represented a liberation for the Turks themselves no less than for the subject nationalities of the Ottoman Empire. This vantage point gives her a sensitivity to the problems involved, unattainable to the same degree by a western European or an American. It also means that her sympathies are fully engaged.

To me, as one whose interest in Turkey is of many years standing, this book is especially welcome, as coming from a member of that countrys very small band of political scientists. They have not had an easy time of recent years, but one hopes that works such as this will win them the recognition, both national and international, which is their due.

The University,

Leeds.

INTRODUCTION

THIS STUDY IS CONCERNED with the examination of some aspects of the political process in four former colonies which have become independent nation-states since the end of the Second World War: India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Ghana.

The rejection of colonialism in large areas of the world has been a striking and, for political scientists, a particularly interesting phenomenon. Former colonies have consequently been studied by them in great detail, especially during the last decade. Previous to this, it was mainly anthropologists, cultural historians, and colonial administrators who gave the colonies special attention. Anthropologists studied the origins of man and his methods of social organization in environments unsullied by modern civilization, cultural historians were interested in the way in which civilizations emerge, flourish, expand, and die, and colonial administrators were especially concerned with the more pedestrian problems of making Western techniques applicable to environments for which they had not been devised. After the war, when these colonies, or so many of them, became independent states, and when these states declared themselves to be new democracies, it was natural that political scientists should turn their attention to them, in order to find out how these new democracies were functioning.