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Decolonisation of africa causes and the lingering effects
Political, economic and social effects of world war2
Political, economic and social effects of world war2
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"The wind of change is blowing through this [African] continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it" (Macmillan). This speech, made by the prime minister of England in 1960, highlights the vast changes occurring in Africa at the time. Changes came quickly. Over the next several years, forty-seven African countries attained independence from colonial rule. Many circumstances and events had and were occurring that led to the changes to which he was referring. The decolonization of Africa occurred over time, for a variety of complex reasons, but can be broken down into two major contributing factors: vast changes brought about in the world because of World War II and a growing sense of African nationalism. The colonization of Africa officially began in 1884 with the Berlin Conference. Western European powers began to split up the land and resources in Africa among themselves. This period of history became known as the Scramble for Africa. The Scramble for Africa occurred because as the slave trade ended, capitalists saw Africa as a continent that they could now exploit through legitimate trade. European capitalists found new ways to make money off of the continent. With greater exploration of the continent even more valuable resources were found. The encouragement of legitimate trade in Africa brought Europeans flocking to colonize Africa. Africa lost their independence, and along with it, their control over their natural resources. Europeans used the term the "White Man's Burden," a concept used by white colonizers in order to impose their way of life on Africans within their colonies, to ... ... middle of paper ... ...ange." BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. . Macmillan, Harold. "Harold Macmillan's Wind of Change Speech." About.com African History. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2014. "Nationalism in Africa - African Nationalism After World War Ii." - Colonial, Pan, Rule, and Nkrumah. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Paalz, Mike. "World War II as the Trigger for African Decolonization." Yahoo Contributor Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2014. Smith, Tony. The End of the European Empire: Decolonization after World War II. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1975. Print. Talton, Benjamin. "The Challenge of Decolonization in Africa." The Challenge of Decolonization in Africa. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Tucker, Carole. "African Nationalism and Liberation in Post World War II Africa." Suite. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
During the late 19th century and the early 20th century many of the European nations began their scramble for Africa which caused Many Africans to suffer from violence like wars, slavery and inequality. Although the Europeans felt power as though they were doing a great cause in the African continent during the Scramble for Africa; Africans had many reactions and actions including factors as rebellion for freedom, against the white settlers and violent resistance.
The "DBQ Project" What Is the Driving Force Behind European Imperialism in Africa? (2012): 257. pp. 177-177. Print.
In Todd Shepard’s work Voices of Decolonization, the featured documents provide keen insight into the geopolitical environment of the era of decolonization (1945-1965) and the external and internal pressures on the relationships between colonial nations and the territories that they held dominion over (Shepard 10). Decolonization is the result of a combination of national self-determination and the establishment of functional international institutions composed of independent sovereign nations united towards common goals. As decolonization progressed, it intersected with points of significant sociopolitical tension between colonies and the nations that colonized them. Some of these moments of tension came in the form of progressive ideals held by international agencies which colonial nations were allied with, the revolt of colonized populations against their standing government in favor of independence, and in moral and political conflicts that arose when decolonization takes a form unexpected or undesired by the primary agents of progressive international institutions.
Prior to the 19th century, the Europeans traded mainly for African slaves. It turns out they were not immune towards certain diseases and therefore had an increasing risk of becoming sick. For years to come this continued, but not much land was conquered. Eventually, conference between only the Europeans was held to divide up the land appropriately, and the scramble for Africa began. The driving forces behind European imperialism in Africa were expanding empires, helping natives, and natural resources.
European imperialism in Africa caused Africans to lose their independence and culture. After a long time, “the wave of Independence across Africa in the 1950s and 1960s brought to the end around 75
Europe, in the late 1800’s, was starting a land grab on the African continent. Around 1878, most of Africa was unexplored, but by 1914, most of Africa, with the lucky exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was carved up between European powers. There were countless motivations that spurred the European powers to carve Africa, like economic, political, and socio–cultural, and there were countless attitudes towards this expansion into Africa, some of approval and some of condemnation. Europe in this period was a world of competing countries. Britain had a global empire to lead, France had competition with Britain for wealth and so did other nations like Germany and Russia.
A. Adu Boahen's African Perspectives on Colonialism neatly classifies African responses to European colonialism during both phases of invasion and occupation during the 19th century with precise labels according to their nature or time period. However, the reactions can also be loosely grouped into two diametric characterizations: peaceful and violent. Although creating this dichotomy seems a gross generalization and oversimplification of the colonial African experience, it more importantly allows for a different perspective- one that exposes the overwhelming success of the typically peaceful or pacifist reaction in contrast to the little gain and large losses of the violent response.
University of Pennsylvania-African studies center. Inaugural speech, Pretoria (Mandela)- 5/10/94 in Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech-Pretoria ,May 10 from ancdip@WN.APC.ORG
Africa’s struggle to maintain their sovereignty amidst the encroaching Europeans is as much a psychological battle as it is an economic and political one. The spillover effects the system of racial superiority had on the African continent fractured ...
In the mid 1980s Africa was struck by a period of famines, desertification, refugees, human rights violations, mutually destructive violence, health problems and economic decline. “among the economic factors, severe balance of trade deficits caused by weak world commodity prices, fluctuating interest rates which cause national debts to swell to unbearable limits, and a severe drop in international aid investment combined to create frustratingly high levels of social-economic hardship.”(Quainoo 6) The issues Africa was facing brought a great deal of doubt to it’s people’s faith in authoritarianism, and eventually led to many protest demanding democratization.
Europeans and Africans have always had some form of interaction mainly through trade, at the time Africans either traded goods or their own people. This lead to Europeans establishing trading post all over Africa, such as El Mina where they traded slaves all around the world. The Europeans became greedy and wanted not only slaves, but Africa’s natural resources. They began to battle over land, Africans did not have the weaponry to win these battles. This helped Europe to increase in land and power throughout Africa. They began to illegally divide the land, throughout Africa in the early 1800s, it was not till the Berlin conference that Africa was legally divided. This was the known as the Scramble for Africa, presented by King Leopold, who convinced them that by dividing land they would help Africa. He promised to promote philanthropy, end Arab slave trade, free trade and increase scientific enterprises. By 1905 most of Africa was under European rule except Ethiopia and Liberia. Europeans managed to suppress the early efforts by most Africans to resist the establishment of colonial rule.
From the 1950s through the early 1990s, nations across Africa broke through the barriers that colonial powers had placed to become nation-states: groups of people in a region who share both common cultural characteristics and self-determination. This was the result of many decades of work by nationalists and citizens to earn one freedom after another. The nation-states of Africa were rewards that were worth the lives and time spent by these brave people. In a way, the prize of independence for African nationalists is similar to the prize of a bouquet of roses, in that having self-determination and sovereignty over your own land is beautiful, no matter the troubles that poke from underneath. For some nation-states in Africa, these thorns of trouble have gone so far as to
The New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa 1880-1914. Jeff Taylor, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
At the end of WWII is when decolonization was brought up as a serious topic of discussion. Over 200,000 Africans had fought in Europe and Asia for the Allies’ freedom and democracy which showed quite the contradiction. They were fighting for something that wasn’t even going to truly benefit them. In 1945 is when the 5th Pan African Conference met to go over the possibility of granting back independence to the colonized areas. Ghana played a significant role during the decolonization process in Africa because Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African majority government to gain independence in 1957. Not only did Ghana gain independence, but they did this by acting nonviolently. For years following th...
An overwhelming majority of African nations has reclaimed their independence from their European mother countries. This did not stop the Europeans from leaving a permanent mark on the continent however. European colonialism has shaped modern-day Africa, a considerable amount for the worse, but also some for the better. Including these positive and negative effects, colonialism has also touched much of Africa’s history and culture especially in recent years.