johndoe@gmail.com
FacebookAre you sure you want to reset the form?
Your mail has been sent successfully
Are you sure you want to remove the alert?
Your session is about to expire! You will be signed out in
Do you wish to stay signed in?
Decolonization in Africa
Study the sources and then answer the questions that follow.
Source A:
| Norman Lowe explains the theories about the causes of decolonization in Africa and how this worked in the different parts of Africa. The main debate that has developed is about the extent to which decolonization was caused by the local nationalist movements, and how far it was brought about by outside political and economic considerations. Robert Holland, a leading exponent of what has become known as the ‘metropolitan thesis’, believes that outside forces – metropolitan factors – were more important: ‘The great colonial powers’, he writes, ‘divested themselves of their subordinate possessions, not because internal pressures within their colonies left them with no other choice, but in the wake of a revisionist process whereby imperial roles came to be seen as incongruent with more “modern” goals in the fields of foreign and economic policy’. [For example] the USA, the USSR and the UN were all against imperialism. Britain had been seriously weakened economically by the Second World War, and the sheer cost of maintaining its Empire, while at the same time developing its own nuclear weapons, was spiralling out of control. Other historians feel that more credit must be given to the strength of local nationalist movements and they acknowledge that in some cases the imperial power was quite simply expelled by sheer force. However, each case was different....in West Africa there were few Europeans...This made the move to independence comparatively straightforward.....In East Africa, especially in Kenya, things were complicated by the ‘settler factor’ – the presence of European and Asian settlers who feared for their future under black governments.....Central Africa was the most difficult area for Britain to deal with because this was where the white settlers were most numerous and most deeply entrenched. Source: Mastering Modern British History, Chapter 34.5. |
Source B:
| Andrew Marr writes about the progress of British decolonization in Africa In the late forties it had been felt both that Africa might become the core of Britain’s new world position and that her countries were far from ready for independence. Within ten years all this was forgotten. There was a rush to independence, urged on from London. No single speech made more of an impact than the one Harold Macmillan made in Cape Town in 1960, known for ever as his ‘wind of change’ speech. It was brave not because of what he said, but because the British Prime Minister chose to make it in the white supremacist South African parliament, in front of men who would be architects of apartheid, horrifying them and appalling a large swathe of Tory opinion back in England, where the right wing Monday Club was formed in protest. Why had London lost its nerve? Partly, it was the mere experience of looking about. The French were getting out of Africa. So too were the Belgians, leaving behind an appalling and very bloody civil war in the Congo....... Macmillan also thought the two world wars had made a fundamental change in the position of the whites around the world: ‘What we have really seen since the war is the revolt of the yellows and blacks from the automatic leadership and control of the whites’. Source: Andrew Marr, A History of Modern Britain, Macmillan, 2007, pp. 188-189 |
Source C:
| Peter Clarke gives his view of the British decolonization in Africa. [In Africa] the British could read the writing on the wall, and acted more adroitly in winding up their empire than did other European countries like France, Belgium or Portugal. Nkrumah in the Gold Coast, like Nehru before him, first earned his nationalist credentials in gaol and subsequently became leader of an independent state. Thus in 1957 Ghana became the first black African republic in the Commonwealth; but such an outcome was easier to achieve in west Africa than in colonies with a higher density of white settlement. That the transition was not free from conflict and bloodshed was shown in Kenya, where the British attempt in the early 1950s to demonize the Mau Mau movement had left a legacy of brutality which was exposed by the death of a number of prisoners at Hola Camp in 1959. The scandal was a bad moment for the Government but not a major setback. Macmillan was determined to speed up the process of decolonization..... Nigeria went in 1960; Sierra Leone, Gambia, Uganda soon followed. With Kenyatta duly transformed from terrorist to responsible leader, Kenya became independent in 1963. Only in Central Africa did the policy of scuttle falter. The Central African Federation was set up in 1953. This lumped together Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, both overwhelmingly black, with (Southern) Rhodesia, where a white supremacist government on the South African model had long been firmly entrenched. In 1963 Nyasaland (became Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (became Zambia) seceded. Apart from the intractable problem of Rhodesia, decolonization might be considered appeasement’s finest hour. Source: Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory, Allen Lane, 1996, pp. 265-267. |
Source D
| John Darwin sums up A tenacious legend proclaims that, from October 1959 onwards, Macmillan and Iain Macleod had decided to end British rule in Africa at maximum speed and hand over power to African nationalists, and that their tough-minded liberalism averted disaster for Britain. [In fact] they had grave doubts about transferring power too rapidly, and their real plan was to transform their African empire gradually to become part of a wide zone of influence.....The plan also involved a “go-slow” while they constructed a sort of federation of the east African colonies. What actually happened in Africa was not in the plan... Once the British decided that they could not risk using force, they had few cards to play against a determined opponent. They displayed, nonetheless, considerable skill in masking their weakness and in devising the institutional machinery that allowed a peaceful withdrawal. But this was not just their own work. Those who aimed to succeed them were all too aware that their own mandate was fragile and their control incomplete.... So once the die of decolonization was cast and the timetable decided, they had every incentive to display an obsequious gratitude for the British ‘gift’ of their freedom. The transfers of power were thus amicable, stately affairs, decorated by royalty. It was a pleasing pantomime in which all could delight. Source: John Darwin, An Unfinished Empire, Allen Lane, 2012, pp. 371, 374-5. |
Using the evidence of the sources and your own knowledge, answer the following questions:
