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50 to gain their own livelihood entered the course of legal study and then the practice of the profession of the
law. Entry to the legal profession was not restricted on ethnic grounds; the course of study was short and
inexpensive and could be easily undertaken. There was, moreover, a considerable effective demand for
legal services.
55 6.The colonial powers were concerned with order and justice and, in their various ways, had attempted
to establish the rule of law in the colonial territories. The wealthy landowning classes and the newer
wealthy merchants were frequently engaged in litigations in which huge sums were involved and the 60
60 possibility of lawyers to earn handsome fees gave an eclat to the legal profession which only the higher
civil service otherwise possessed.
6.
Furthermore, in countries like India, Egypt or Nigeria, for example, what else could a university or
65
college graduate do with his qualifications if he did not wish to settle for a clerkship in the government or in
a foreign commercial firm? The law schools were therefore able to attract throngs of students. Once the
legal qualifications had been obtained, the young lawyer went into the nether regions of the bar, where he
70
had much time for other interests. The leisure time of the young lawyer was a fertile field in which much
political activity grew.
8.This existence of a stratum of underemployed young lawyers was made possible by their kinship
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connections. The aspirants to the intellectual professions in the under-developed countries almost always
came from the more prosperous sections of society. They were the sons of chiefs, noblemen, and
landowners, of ministers, and officials of territories in which indirect rule existed, and of civil servants and
80
teachers in countries under direct rule. In some countries, they occasionally came from prosperous
mercantile families, though seldom in large numbers.
9. These social origins, against the background of the diffuse obligations accepted by members of an
85
extended kinship system, meant that even where the income gained from a profession was inadequate to
maintain a man and his immediate family, he could still continue to associate himself with the profession.
The deficiencies in his earnings were made up by his kinsmen. Unlike teaching, the civil service, and most
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journalism, where membership in the profession is defined not merely by qualification and intermittent
practice but by actual employment, a person need not earn a living by legal practice in order to be a lawyer.
This is why the legal profession in nearly all the underdeveloped countries has been, before and since
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independence, crowded by a few very successful lawyers and a great number of very unsuccessful ones.
10. These are also some of the reasons why the legal profession supplied so many outstanding leaders of
100 the nationalist movements during colonial times, and why the lawyer-intellectuals form such a vital part of
the political elites of the new states.
11.
Students. No consideration of the intellectual class in underdeveloped countries can disregard
105 the university students. In advanced countries, students are not regarded as ex officio intellectuals; in
underdeveloped countries, they are. Students in modem colleges and universities in underdeveloped coun-
tries have been treated as part of the intellectual class — or at least were before independence and they
110 have regarded themselves as such. Perhaps the mere commencement of an adult form of contact with
modem intellectual traditions and the anticipation — however insecure that acquisition of those traditions
would qualify one for the modem intellectual professions conferred that status on university and college
students, and derivatively, on secondary-school students.
115 12.The student enjoyed double favor in the eyes of his fellowcountryman. As one of the tiny minority
gaining a modem education, he was becoming qualified for a respected, secure, and well-paid position
120 close to the center of society, as a civil servant, teacher or lawyer. As a bearer of the spirit of revolt against
the foreign ruler, he gained the admiration and confidence of those of his seniors who were imbued with the
national idea.
12.
Formally, the student movements in the colonial countries began their careers only in the 1920's,
125 but long before that the secondary schools, colleges, and universities had been a source of personnel for the
more ebullient and aggressive nationalistic movements. Since the beginning of the present century,
students have been in a state of turbulence. This turbulence flowed more and more into politics, until the
130 students became vital foci of the national independence movements. The secondary schools, colleges, and
universities attended by the students of underdeveloped countries became academies of national revolution.
It was not the intention of the administrators and teachers that they should become such; rather, the
135 contrary. Nonetheless they did, both in their own countries and in the metropolitan centers of London and
Paris, where many of the most important architects of independence were trained, and where they found
the intellectual resonance and moral support which sustained them in lean years.