African Decolonization

Before the 1950s, almost all of Africa was controlled by European empires or white settler states. Since then the empires and settler states have gone, with the exception of South Africa, to be replaced by more than 50 sovereign African states, the largest addition to the comity of nations since the consolidation of the nation state. Providing an introduction to the transformation of Africa since World War II, this study assesses to what extent the change of Africa resulted from deliberate imperial policy, from the pressures of African nationalism or the superpower rivalries of the USA and USSR. It analyzes what powers were transferred and to whom they were given. Pan-Africanism is singled out, in a chapter devoted to its rise and fall, as significant not only in its own right, but as indicating the transformation of expectations when the new rulers, who had endorsed its geopolitical logic before taking power, settled into the routines of government. The meaning of de-colonization is contested throughout Africa and beyond, not just by historians and social scientists, but by all the continent. It is the purpose of this book to show that this living past pervades the present.