Page 138 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

africa, colonial 23

(5) Whereas all African peoples vehemently resent their agents, thus making it feasible for a few white
the militarisation of Africans and the use of African settlers to lord it over millions of indigenous Africans
soldiers in a nefarious global game against their as in the proposed Central African Federation, Kenya,
brethren as in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa, Union of South Africa,Algeria,Angola, Mozambique
Cameroons, Ivory Coast, Rhodesia and in the Suez and the Cameroons.
Canal invasion. (8) Whereas imperialists are now co-ordinating
(6) Whereas fundamental human rights, freedom their activities by forming military and economic
of speech, freedom of association, freedom of move- pacts such as NATO, European Common Market,
ment, freedom of worship, freedom to live a full and Free Trade Area, Organisation for European Eco-
abundant life, as approved by the All-African People’s nomic Co-operation, Common Organisation in
Conference on 13th December, 1958, are denied to Sahara for the purpose of strengthening their imperi-
Africans through the activities of imperialists. alist activities in Africa and elsewhere.
(7) Whereas denial of the franchise to Africans on Source: Lincoln,W. B. (1968). Documents in world history, 1945–1967 (pp. 200–201).
the basis of race or sex has been one of the principal San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company.
instruments of colonial policy by imperialists and

allowed by colonial states dependent on cash crop pro- especially among young Africans who were anxious to
duction for their revenues, and state coercion in African escape the confines of colonialism and play a larger role
agriculture increased. Colonial taxation had enmeshed in the world.
African producers in the cash nexus of the global market. Leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Léopold
World War II (1939–1945) also had profound impli- Senghor of Senegal, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya re-
cations for Africa.The British mobilized large numbers of turned to Africa from sojourns to Europe and the United
African conscripts; many Kenyan and Nigerian soldiers States to lead new movements of mass nationalism. In
saw action in Burma (defending British India from Japan- doing so, they were following the example of nationalists
ese assault) while white South African soldiers fought to in India, which had gained full independence from
liberate Ethiopia from the Italians who had occupied the Britain in 1947. Conflict and occasional violence marked
African kingdom in 1935. North Africa was a major the- the independence struggle in most colonies, but inde-
ater of war. Most French colonial governors, in Africa as pendence was frequently achieved through peaceful nego-
in Southeast Asia, allied themselves with the collabora- tiation. Such was the case in the Gold Coast. In 1957
tionist Vichy regime. But the governor of French Equato- Kwame Nkrumah became its prime minister, changed the
rial Africa, Félix Éboué (1884–1944), a descendent of name of the country to Ghana, and set a precedent for
slaves from French Guiana, declared his support for the the continent as a whole.
Free French forces, making the city of Brazzaville an In settler colonies, however, colonialism could not be
important center of French resistance to fascism. overthrown without significant violence. In Kenya the set-
The war was a watershed in African history. Returning tlers refused to compromise with Jomo Kenyatta’s Kenya
soldiers brought greater knowledge of the world back to African National Union. The ensuing Mau Mau Revolt
Africa’s towns and villages. Allied wartime propaganda (1954–1960) led to thousands of deaths, mostly African,
had asked Africans to sacrifice in the interests of “free- before independence was achieved in 1964.The violence
dom,” a term that now fully entered the vocabulary of was even greater in Algeria, where independence from
African politics. Before the war only a tiny elite of France followed a bitter eight-year war (1954–1962) and
Western-educated Africans had imagined the possibility cost a million lives.
of self-governing or independent African states. Now The ColdWar (1945–1991) often played a major role
there was a much wider social constituency for that idea, in regions where violence accompanied decolonization.