HIST-1106EL Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kikuyu Central Association, Walt Whitman Rostow
8 Nov 2020
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Cheikth Babou – Decolonization or national liberation
Dominant scholarship on decolonization fails to recognize the role of nationalists in Africa.
• They focus on postwar relations and discount the role of the nationalists.
• Creates the idea that colonial policy-makers drove the rush for decolonization and were
solely responsible for these changes
• Decolonization was presented by the colonialists as a planned process that attempted to
anticipate the demands of African nationalists and make out a form of order that keeps
the colonialists in control. However, this process did not go as planned.
European colonial regimes could only exist as long as:
1. Colonial subjects relinquish their authority
2. Politicians in metropolitan areas accept colonies as ethical
3. The resultant empires receive international recognition.
Post WWII, Britain and France's confidence was powerfully shaken.
• The Atlantic Charter's belief in self-determination put the colonies under scrutiny
• Since the war, rights of conquest had been undermined, the morals of colonization came
into question, and there was the important administration of mandate countries (older
German colonies that it had lost after WWI).
• The superpowers of US and USSR emerged mostly on the side of the nationalists (for
their own reasons).
o Note that none of the nationalists who campaigned for their states' freedoms
professed to be communist although they were clearly influence by Marxist
ideas.
o However, whatever forces were influencing the colonial powers, the forces at
work inside the states and within nationalist groups were the more powerful
ones.
• WWII had an especially big impact for a number of reasons including:
o Impacted colonial master / subservient local relationships as the they fought side
by side Developed local capacities not just to extract raw materials but also
produce them, facilitating the creation of a number of middle class families.
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o Increased forced labor and pressure to produce on the level required to support
a war often resulted in famines and resentment.
o Those drafted into the army returned having seen a less powerful, more
humanized version of the colonial powers when abroad.
o This all led to a growing demand for more education, and a greater role of
Africans in the economy and administration of colonies.
• Colonizers could not curb this vociferous demands and had to invent a new legitimacy
for their colonial rule. This came with the modernization theory and the idea of
shaping Africa to eventually be part of the global order. For this, Britain trained a
group of African elites in high schools and colleges (such as in Achimota Ghana, and
Makerere Uganda) in order to prepare them for a more Africanized workforce (with the
British still running the show obvs).
o This also came with a denunciation of radical nationalists who were said, by the
British, to be motivated by self-interest.
o These British plans had the total opposite to the expected effect; it only further
enforced the clear contradictions within the colonial ideology. Colonial subjects
were seen as entirely different and therefore liable for exploitation but also not
so different that they could now be modernized.
o The British countered by opening the prospect of African self-governance and
but delaying the idea of independence for later.
• This resulted in a greater appreciation for African culture and tradition such as within
the Franz Fanon's negritude movement.
Process of African decolonization
GHANA
• 1947: United Gold Coast Convention (Ghana) was formed by nationalist leaders like
Kwame Nkrumah (a prominent pan-Africanist).
• 1948: violent revolts took place when police shot two protesting former Ghanaian
servicemen which led to rioting and looting.
• 1949: Nkrumah and follows broke away from UGCC and created Convention People's
Party (CPP) with the idea of 'positive actions' (a civil disobedience campaign). More
violence took place and Nkrumah was arrested as a state of emergency descended.
