tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/tanganyika-30559/articlesTanganyika – The Conversation2017-03-12T10:18:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/738812017-03-12T10:18:48Z2017-03-12T10:18:48ZThe legacy of autocratic rule in Tanzania - from Nyerere to life under Magufuli<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159965/original/image-20170308-24182-1whteph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania's President John Magufuli is praised by some for his "no nonsense" attitude.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Arusha Declaration of <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679966.001.0001/acprof-9780199679966-chapter-20">1967</a> is a defining document in Tanzania’s and Africa’s post colonial history. It began a process of nationalisation and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanzania/Economy">rural collectivisation</a> which was then replicated in other parts of the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533950008458699?journalCode=rsdy20">continent</a>.</p>
<p>As one of the few countries in East Africa not beset by internecine conflicts, Tanzania is often seen as a <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Rwanda-among-least-peaceful-countries-Tanzania-high/2558-1891216-view-printVersion-14piq48/index.html">beacon of hope</a>. But the country’s history hasn’t been entirely peaceful. </p>
<p>For example, the creation of the <a href="http://www.sadc.int/member-states/tanzania/">United Republic</a> in 1964 was the outcome of a <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201201120789.html">bloody revolution</a> in Zanzibar. And the forced resettlement of the rural population in the 1970s was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/101/405/509/52353/Almost-an-Oxfam-in-itself-Oxfam-Ujamaa-and">often brutal</a>. The supposedly backward south of the country was most affected by this <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40984999?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">social engineering</a>. </p>
<p>Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first post-independence leader, might be rightly revered across Africa for the role his government played in various <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tanzania-and-its-support-southern-african-liberation-movements">liberation struggles</a>. But his domestic agenda isn’t recalled with the same fondness, especially in the south.</p>
<p>Multiparty democracy came to Tanzania in <a href="http://www.gsdrc.org/document-library/multiparty-democracy-in-tanzania/">1995</a>. Yet the autocratic and paternalistic tendencies remain, as reflected in the extremely heavy-handed nature of the response to <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/national/Why-Mtwara--violence-is-beyond-gas-pipeline/1840392-1861170-u5mncc/index.html">unrest in Mtwara in 2013</a>.</p>
<p>This is also echoed by the actions and rhetoric of current President <a href="http://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/east-africa/2017/01/03/tanzanias-president-john-magufuli-the-bulldozer/">John “the bulldozer” Magufuli</a>. While some celebrate his “no nonsense” attitude when it comes to tackling corruption and excessive government spending, others express major concerns over his ban on opposition <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Enough-politicking--JPM-tells-Opposition/-/1840340/3264682/-/15iu05dz/-/index.html">political rallies</a> until the 2020 general election. He’s also drawn ire for the failure of his government to implement court <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Implement-our-rulings--rights-court-tells-TZ-govt/1840340-3833490-t71ylhz/index.html">rulings on human rights</a>.</p>
<p>And the country has witnessed major protests at the management of newly discovered <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22652809">reserves of natural gas</a> in the south.</p>
<p>As a result there’s a widespread view across southern Tanzania that for half a century the central government has pursued a deliberate process of mistreatment and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Making_of_a_Periphery.html?id=mcabzHC8N70C&redir_esc=y">marginalisation</a>.</p>
<p>Rural collectivisation is a significant milestone in such claims, a process that was kick-started by the Arusha Declaration. The document’s 50th anniversary is a prescient moment to reflect on its impact and the legacy of autocratic rule in Tanzania. </p>
<h2>Tumultuous times</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2016.26">fieldwork</a> over many years in southern Tanzania has revealed widespread scepticism about the value of independence to the inhabitants. <em>Uhuru</em> – or independence – from Britain in 1961 is seen to be a less significant moment in the lives of many rural Tanzanians than the Arusha Declaration. </p>
<p>As a 90-year old farmer told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tanganyika became Tanzania and our flag changed, (Queen) Elizabeth left and (President) Nyerere arrived. The leaders knew about these changes but nothing changed for me… Change came after Nyerere’s speech in Arusha, he told us about ujamaa and we were forced to move from our villages.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many Tanzanians living in the southern parts of the country feel the same way. This isn’t surprising given that the declaration triggered rural collectivisation (villagisation) which brought about tangible changes to people’s lives. It also cemented the language of <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/political%20science/volume8n1/ajps008001004.pdf"><em>ujamaa</em></a> or “African Socialism”. </p>
<p>Villagisation was guided by the belief that communal farming could improve agricultural productivity and guarantee long-term food security and self-sufficiency. </p>
<p>At the outset Nyerere declared that migration to ujamaa villages would happen voluntarily. Forcing people to move wouldn’t be countenanced by the state.</p>
<p>But when only 15% of the total population chose to resettle between 1969 and 1973 the governing Tanganyika Africa National Union <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/2787373.pdf">decreed</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to live in villages is an order. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nyerere’s increasing sense of urgency is reflected both in his famous phrase <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/78ABA581AA13EDCC6C964A4AF3AC75E1/S0022278X0300421Xa.pdf/we-must-run-while-others-walk-popular-participation-and-development-crisis-in-tanzania-1961-9.pdf">“we must run while others walk”</a> and in the decision to rapidly transform voluntary migration into mass resettlement. Many people that I interviewed recalled this as a brutal process. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>People were moved by force, the soldiers came, they came to worry the people, and they were taken, all of their things <a href="http://roar.uel.ac.uk/4950/">were destroyed or put in a truck</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not all recollections of this process were universally negative. But first hand experiences of villagisation had a profound and lasting impact on many people. </p>
<p>These were tumultuous times in the country, also reflected in increased authoritarianism in Tanzania from the late 1960s onward. Renowned Ugandan academic <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/mamdani.html">Mahmood Mamdani</a> describes the events as <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5839.html">“decentralized despotism”</a> – a paternalistic urban elite making decisions for the “backward” rural poor. This, he argued, bore many of the hallmarks of colonial modes of rule within post colonial power structures. </p>
<p>There have been other critiques of the <em>ujamaa</em> villages project. It not only affected people on the ground but also precipitated a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7679.1975.tb00439.x/pdf">national food crisis</a>.</p>
<p>One of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2016.26">my interviewees</a> blamed Nyerere directly for </p>
<blockquote>
<p>destroy[ing] our farms and houses to build something that he called the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why caution is required</h2>
<p>Magufuli’s sky high national <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201609160870.html">approval ratings</a> show no signs of abating. This adds further fuel to the <a href="http://africasacountry.com/2016/10/whatwouldnyereredo/">comparison</a> that is made with Julius “father of the nation” Nyerere.</p>
<p>The autocratic nature of Nyerere’s rule, informed by a clear <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/african-studies-review/article/div-classtitlecolonial-legacies-and-postcolonial-authoritarianism-in-tanzania-connects-and-disconnectsdiv/CAB95D655FDF2C003FE2A9CE128CDF28">sense of paternalism</a> towards the rural majority, mirrors the colonial model and is reflected in contemporary political leadership in Tanzania.</p>
<p>I believe that there’s merit in the argument that the forcible resettlement of the rural majority under Nyerere partially mirrored colonial modes of rule. The worrying thing is that further continuities are evident in the enactment of the Arusha Declaration and the authoritarianism of today.</p>
<p>This should be food for thought for those heaping praise on the new regime in Tanzania.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Ahearne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Multiparty democracy came to Tanzania in 1995 but the autocratic rule under the country’s first post-independence leader
Julius Nyerere, seems to be echoed by current President John Magufuli.Rob Ahearne, Senior Lecturer in International Development, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642752016-08-24T10:32:09Z2016-08-24T10:32:09ZBritish Empire’s forgotten propaganda tool for ‘primitive peoples’: mobile cinema<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135162/original/image-20160823-30231-1j4d3lf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Van in Ghana early 1950s. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CFU</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 1945. A mobile cinema van drives into a village in Ghana. Word spreads, music plays and a crowd gathers. The travelling commentator gives local chiefs a tour of the equipment, showing off this latest British technology, and explains the aims of the film show. Once darkness falls, the screen is set up, the commentator organises the crowd and the film show begins. </p>
<p>Such a scene was <a href="http://cinemastandrews.org.uk/archive/colonial-cinema/">far from unusual</a> in the British Empire. It was commonplace in many parts of Africa, not to mention other parts of the world through different modes of delivery. From <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/567236/summary">trains in interwar Britain</a> to river boats in 1950s Malaya (Malaysia) to cinema vans in colonial Africa, the mobile film show was part of a bigger project to use new forms of film and spaces to administer, control and maintain a rapidly changing empire. </p>
<p>It was often brought to colonial subjects courtesy of the <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/production-company/colonial-film-unit">Colonial Film Unit</a> in London. The unit was set up at the outbreak of war in 1939 and disbanded on the cusp of widespread independence in 1955, producing over 200 films in the process.</p>
<p>The African shows typically contained four or five short films, mostly made for African audiences. They would include an “entertainment” film, with edited Charlie Chaplin films especially popular, but the majority would be “instructional” shorts and talks designed to promote government initiatives. Audiences were encouraged to sign up and act on what they had seen afterwards – visiting an accompanying Post Office Savings van, for example, or a vaccination unit – with a local leader first in the queue. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135164/original/image-20160823-30252-vtlwmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colonial Film Unit sample film programme.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CFU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whether promoting child welfare <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/6730">in Ghana</a>, instructing in modern methods of cocoa production <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/759">in Nigeria</a> or depicting Africans <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1007">living</a> and working <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1444">in Britain</a> (see the clips below), these films sought to project a modern vision of empire. It was about instructing and defining colonial citizens and legitimising the work of the colonial government. </p>
<p>The Colonial Film Unit did this not just through the subjects it filmed but in the way it filmed them. It championed a specific mode of production that avoided close-ups, cross-cutting, short scenes or excessive movement within the frame. This was based on reductive assumptions about the intellectual capabilities of its rural audience or “primitive peoples”, as unit producer William Sellers <a href="https://archive.org/stream/documen02film#page/172/mode/2up">referred to</a> them.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yBOcLnyMX-M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The film shows were also a way of organising the colonial space, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/signal-and-noise">for example</a> through carefully outlined seating plans that reaffirmed traditional hierarchies. Some government officials reportedly took most pride in the fact that the crowd had learned to stand to attention at the end of the show and sing the British national anthem – empire in microcosm. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6QbHhm4620I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>A change is gonna come</h2>
<p>Unlike in much Western cinema the pivotal figure in these events was not the director but the <a href="https://cinemaintransit.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/an-interview-with-a-former-cinema-van-commentator/">local commentator</a>. He might set up the screening, provide an introductory lecture, answer questions and translate and talk over the films. </p>
<p>He would offer call and responses, ask questions of the audience, outline the intended message of the film and direct where the audience looked on screen. He might talk over or replace the British voice on the soundtrack, in the process emerging as a new voice in African cinema. Indeed audience responses <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439685.2015.1049863?journalCode=chjf20">show how</a> the commentator could completely transform a film event, even prompting widespread laughter during a film on venereal disease. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135167/original/image-20160823-30249-14qo6s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In western Nigeria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CFU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The colonial authorities largely overlooked or downplayed the importance of this commentator, allowing him to work unsupervised for example. Yet they did recognise the value of using a local figure to convey its messages – <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_use_of_mobile_cinema_and_radio_vans.html?id=4VPHFXWOA4oC">noting for example</a> that audiences “believe much more readily what is told them by other Africans” and that “their jokes went down better than ours”. </p>
<p>While the Colonial Film Unit could be dismissive of its audiences’ capabilities – one official in Tanganyika (Tanzania) <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439685.2015.1049863?journalCode=chjf20">suggested</a> they were “not sufficiently sophisticated to be bored” – audience responses often challenged the intended government aims. At the height of the <a href="http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_malaya.html">Emergency in Malaya</a> in the 1950s, the government <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/2545">cancelled screenings</a> of a propaganda film made by the Malayan Film Unit after reports that cinemagoers had cheered the onscreen appearance of communist leader Chin Peng. </p>
<p>In Nyasaland (Malawi) at the height of the nationalist movement, mobile units, and by extension government messages, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Flickering_Shadows.html?id=F15xAAAAMAAJ">were blocked</a> from reaching their destination. On other occasions, people stood in front of screens or nationalist leaders took to the microphone themselves. In Ghana a lamp was actually fitted to the screen to prevent unrest among the audience, using the cinema screen to light up political dissidence. It was as if the film was watching the audience. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135169/original/image-20160823-30252-124wyv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On location in West Africa, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CFU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The end is nigh</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135168/original/image-20160823-30249-r9y5ph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1950 Colonial Film Unit magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CFU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work of the Colonial Film Unit took place against a backdrop of global war, civil unrest, Cold War politics and emerging independence movements. The film shows revealed and were a response to the tumultuous changes taking place across the British Empire. </p>
<p>When William Sellers had outlined his plans for the film show in 1941 he suggested that a good way to get the crowd’s attention was for the commentator to “ask a question to which the obvious answer is ‘yes’”. Such a question, he suggested, might be: “Are you proud to be British?”. The question would be asked three times, and “almost every member of the audience will reply and their answer comes back in a roar”.</p>
<p>A decade later, when Sellers revisited these plans, the suggested question had intriguingly changed from “Are you proud to be British?” to “Are you all well?” It would appear that by the 1950s, the original question was no longer rhetorical as the moves towards independence gathered pace. </p>
<p>The Colonial Film Unit would soon <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1955/jun/29/colonial-film-unit">close</a>, but its influence often lived on beyond independence, whether through personnel, equipment, or films. As one example, the Colonial Film Unit had set up training schools in Ghana, Jamaica and Cyprus in the late 1940s as part of political moves to transfer power to the colonies. These schools provided a core group of filmmakers for the emerging <a href="http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/production-company/gold-coast-film-unit">local film units</a>, which would continue to produce, and exhibit films for many years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Rice does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the dying days of empire, the British financed a global cinema service.Tom Rice, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.