by Norman Lowe
Ethiopia was handed back to the rule of the Emperor Haile Selassie, who had been forced into exile when the Italians invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia) in 1935.
Libya was given independence under King Idris (1951).
Eritrea was made part of Ethiopia (1952) but it was to have a large measure of self-government within a federal system.
Italian Somaliland was merged with British Somaliland to form the independent state of Somalia (1960).
Some of these arrangements did not prove to be very successful. Both Idris and Selassie became unpopular with their peoples, Idris because he was thought to be too pro-West, and Selassie because he made no attempt to modernize Ethiopia and did little to improve the living standards of his people. He also made the mistake of cancelling Eritrea’s rights of self-government (1962), which prompted the Eritreans into launching a war for independence. Idris was overthrown in 1969 by a socialist revolutionary movement, which nationalized the oil industry and began to modernize the country. Selassie was overthrown in 1974. New leaders soon emerged – Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and Colonel Mengistu in Ethiopia, both of whom turned to the USSR for economic aid. Mengistu seemed to have the more serious problems. He made the mistake of refusing to come to terms with the Eritreans and was faced with other provinces – Tigre and Ogaden – also wanting independence. As he struggled to suppress all these breakaway movements, military expenditure soared and his country sank into even deeper poverty and famine (see Section 25.9).
24.7 VERDICT ON DECOLONIZATION
Although some states, particularly Britain (with the exception of Kenya), handled decolonization better than others, in general it was not a pleasant experience for the colonies, and there was no simple happy ending. There were some gains for the new states, which now had much more control over what went on inside their frontiers; and there were some gains for ordinary people, such as advances in education and social services, and a political culture which allowed them to vote. However, it soon became fashionable to dismiss the entire colonial and imperial experience as a disaster, in which European nations, with supreme arrogance, imposed control over their subject peoples, exploited them ruthlessly and then withdrew unwillingly, leaving them impoverished and facing new problems. Piers Brendon points out that this was not really surprising, since ‘the British Empire’s real purpose was not to spread sweetness and light but to increase Britain’s wealth and power. Naturally its coercive and exploitative nature must be disguised.’ The same applied to other European empires, except perhaps that they were not as good as the British in disguising it. George Orwell remarked that empire was ‘a despotism with theft as its final object’. Bertrand Russell called the British Empire ‘a cesspool for British moral refuse’, by which he apparently meant that many of the British administrators and officials were racist bullies.
There is plenty of evidence to support this negative view of colonialism. Although by no means all officials were racist bullies, there is no doubt that most of them treated the native peoples with arrogance, and considered them to be inferior beings or lesser breeds. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the army vowed to spill ‘barrels and barrels of the filth that flows in these niggers’ veins for every drop of blood’ that they had shed. Piers Brendon shows that ‘the history of India is punctuated by famines which caused tens of millions of deaths’. During a severe famine in Bengal in 1942–3, Churchill refused to divert shipping to take food supplies to Calcutta. The result – over 3 million people died from starvation. Much more can be added to the debit list: the slaughter of thousands of Aborigines in Australia and Maoris in New Zealand; during the Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa, the British set up concentration camps in which about one-sixth of the entire Boer population died. Whenever there was any resistance, retribution was usually swift and disproportionate: Afghanistan, Ceylon, Jamaica, Burma, Kenya and Iraq were all ruthlessly subjugated. One of the latest historians to pronounce on imperialism is Richard Gott, in his book Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (2012). He goes along with what is probably the majority view, presenting a long catalogue of crimes against humanity committed by British imperialists: slavery, famine, prison, repression, battles, massacre, devastation and extermination; it makes depressing reading.
What about the supposed benefits that imperialism was claimed to have brought? The evidence suggests that, at best, these were thinly spread.
Neo-colonialism meant that western European countries and the USA still exerted a great deal of control over the new states, which continued to need the markets and the investment that the West could provide.
Many new states, especially in Africa, had been badly prepared or not prepared at all for independence. Their frontiers were often artificial ones forced on them by the Europeans and there was little incentive for different tribes to stay together. In Nigeria and the Belgian Congo tribal differences helped to cause civil war. When the British withdrew from Nyasaland (Malawi) there were only three secondary schools for 3 million Africans, and not one single industrial factory. When the Portuguese were forced to withdraw from Mozambique, they deliberately destroyed installations and machinery in revenge.
Although the people of the newly independent states were now able to vote, in most cases, the governments which took over were run by the local political elite groups. There was no social revolution and no guarantee that ordinary people would be any better off. Many historians, including Ellen M. Wood, have pointed out that their new political rights and citizenship were essentially passive. People were allowed to vote from time to time, but in practice it hardly made any difference to the way the country was run. ‘The whole point of this strategy’, she writes, ‘is to put formal political rights in place of social rights, and to put as much of social life as possible out of the reach of democratic accountability.’ In countries where new governments were prepared to introduce socialist policies (nationalizing resources or foreign businesses), or where governments showed any sign of being pro-communist, the western countries disapproved. They often responded by cutting off aid or helping to destabilize the government, and in some cases, even overthrowing governments. This happened in Indo-China, Indonesia, East Timor, Chad, Angola, Mozambique, Zaire and Jamaica. For example, in 1974 when Portugal withdrew from East Timor, the indigenous population opted to become independent. But the Indonesian leader, General Suharto, claimed East Timor for Indonesia. The leading political party in East Timor, known as FRETILIN, was thought to be Marxist, so that an independent East Timor might have socialist or even communist leanings. Consequently US president Gerald Ford gave Suharto the go-ahead: Indonesian troops move into East Timor to force the people to submit to Indonesian rule. They resisted stoutly, and there was a long campaign of terror in which around 200 000 people were killed out of a total population of only 700 000. Only in 1999 did the UN intervene and helped East Timor to gain its independence. Similar Cold War interventions took place in many countries in Central and South America which had gained their independence much earlier, in the nineteenth century (see Chapter 26).
All the Third World states faced intense poverty. They were economically underdeveloped and often relied on exports of only one or two commodities; a fall in the world price of their product was a major disaster. Loans from abroad left them heavily in debt (see Section 26.2). As usual, Africa was worst hit: it was the only area of the world where, in 1987, incomes were on average lower than in 1972.
On the other hand, in 2003, historian Niall Ferguson brought out a strong defence of the British Empire and its legacy. While admitting that Britain’s record as a colonial power was not without blemish, he argued that the benefits of British rule were considerable. In the nineteenth century the British ‘pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour’. In addition they developed a global network of modern communications, spread a system of law and order and ‘maintained a global peace unmatched before or since’. When the Empire came to an end, the
former British territories were left with the successful structures of liberal capitalism, the institutions of parliamentary democracy and the English language, which today is a vitally important medium of global communication. ‘What the British Empire proved’, Ferguson concludes controversially, ‘is that empire is a form of international government which can work – and not just for the benefit of the ruling power. It sought to globalize not just an economic but a legal and ultimately a political system too.’
In conclusion, it seems fair to say that so many limitations were placed on the independence given to the former colonies after the Second World War that the result was to divide people’s political rights from any chance of expressing their rights in social and economic affairs. True, they were now able to vote, but this did not necessarily enable them to improve their standards of living, since governments were still dominated by wealthy privileged elites. Canadian historian Anthony J. Hall calls this ‘the great betrayal of humanity’s democratic promise’. Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of the newly independent Ghana, described it well in his book Neo-Colonialism. Criticizing the growing power of global capitalism, he wrote: ‘For those who practise neo-colonialism, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.’ In 1946 there were 74 nation-states on the planet; in 1995, thanks to decolonization, the number had risen to 192. In the words of Anthony J. Hall:
There was much unevenness, however, in the outcomes from this process of decolonization. Indeed the evidence is overwhelming that the frontier expansions of global corporations, along with the exercise of coercive authority centred in the military–industrial complex [see Section 23.3(b)] of the United States, intensifies the disparities of wealth and power that continue to reside at the very core in its most essential sense. Class exploitation and colonial exploitation are two sides of the same coin … [it all tends] to favour the interests of small, local oligarchies rather than to deliver on the ideals of broad-ranging liberation that the winds of change seemed initially to promise.
FURTHER READING
Anderson, D., Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (Weidenfeld, 2005).
Brasted, H., ‘Decolonisation in India: Britain’s Positive Role’, Modern History Review (November 1990).
Brendon, P., ‘A Moral Audit of the British Empire’, History Today (October 2007).
Brendon, P. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (Jonathan Cape, 2007).
Clarke, P., The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: The Demise of a Superpower, 1944–47 (Allen Lane, 2007).
Davidson, B., Africa in Modern History (Macmillan, 1992).
Elkins, C., Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (Jonathan Cape, 2005).
Ferguson, N., Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2003).
Ferguson, N., Civilisation: The West and the Rest (Allen Lane, 2011).
Gott, R., Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (Verso, 2012).
Hall, A. J., Earth into Property. Colonization, Decolonization and Capitalism (McGill University Press, 2010).
Holland, R. F., European Decolonisation 1918–1981 (Macmillan, 1985).
Holland, R. F., ‘Imperial Decline: A New Historiography’, Modern History Review (February 1992).
Holland, R. F., Emergencies and Disorders in the European Empires after 1945 (Routledge, 2004).
Hyam, R., Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-68 (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Kriger, N. J., Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Schwarz, B., The White Man’s World (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Tunzelmann, A. von, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
Wood, E. M., ‘Democracy as Ideology of Empire’, in C. Mooers (ed.), The New Imperialists: Ideologies of Empire (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006).
QUESTIONS
‘Without de Gaulle’s masterly handling of the situation, the Algerian crisis would probably have plunged France into civil war. How far would you agree with this verdict on President de Gaulle’s contribution to the events leading to Algerian independence?
‘Decolonization did not bring the benefits for the majority of the African people which they had hoped for.’ Explain why you agree or disagree with this assessment of decolonization in Africa.
‘Indian independence was not a gift from the British; it was the hard-won fruit of struggle and sacrifice.’ Explain whether you think this is an accurate verdict on India’s progress towards independence.
Explain why it was thought necessary to divide India, creating the separate state of Pakistan.
Assess the reasons for the growth of nationalism in the European colonies after the Second World War. How important was nationalism in bringing about decolonization?
There is a document question about the Kenyan struggle for independence on the website.
Chapter 25
Problems in Africa
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
After achieving independence, the new African nations faced similar problems. It is not possible in the limited space available to look at events in every state in Africa. The following sections examine the problems common to all the states, and show what happened in some of the countries which experienced one or more of these problems. For example:
Ghana suffered economic problems, the failure of democracy and several coups.
Nigeria experienced civil war, a succession of military coups and brutal military dictatorship.
Tanzania – extreme poverty.
The Congo – civil war and military dictatorship.
Angola – civil war prolonged by outside interference.
Burundi and Rwanda – civil war and horrifying tribal slaughter.
South Africa was a special case: after 1980, when Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) gained its independence, South Africa was the last bastion of white rule on the continent of Africa, and the white minority was determined to hold out to the bitter end against black nationalism. Gradually the pressures became too much for the white minority, and in May 1994 Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.
Liberia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe also had their own special problems.
In the mid-1980s most of the countries of Africa began to experience HIV/AIDS, which by 2004 had reached pandemic proportions, especially in sub-Saharan
Africa. Some 28 million people – about 8 per cent of the population – were HIV positive.
25.1 PROBLEMS COMMON TO THE AFRICAN STATES
(a) Tribal differences
They each contained a number of different tribes which had only been held together by the foreign colonial rulers and which had united in the nationalist struggle for freedom from the foreigners. As soon as the Europeans withdrew, there was little incentive to stay together, and they tended to regard loyalty to the tribe as more important than loyalty to their new nation. In Nigeria, the Congo (Zaire), Burundi and Rwanda, tribal differences became so intense that they led to civil war.
(b) They were economically under-developed
In this, they were like many other Third World states. Most African states had very little industry; this had been a deliberate policy by the colonial powers, so that Africans would have to buy manufactured goods from Europe or the USA; the role of the colonies had been to provide food and raw materials. After independence they often relied on only one or two commodities for export, so that a fall in the world price of their products was a major disaster. Nigeria, for example, relied heavily on its oil exports, which produced about 80 per cent of its annual income. There was a shortage of capital and skills of all kinds, and the population was growing at a rate of over 2 per cent a year. Loans from abroad left them heavily in debt, and as they concentrated on increasing exports to pay for the loans, food for home consumption became scarcer. All this left the African nat
ions heavily dependent on western European countries and the USA for both markets and investment and enabled those countries to exert some control over African governments (neo-colonialism). In the atmosphere of the Cold War, some states suffered direct military intervention from countries which did not like their government, usually because they were thought to be too left-wing and under Soviet influence. This happened to Angola, which found itself invaded by troops from South Africa and Zaire because those countries disapproved of Angola’s Marxist-style government.
(c) Political problems
African politicians lacked experience of how to work the systems of parliamentary democracy left behind by the Europeans. Faced with difficult problems, they often failed to cope, and governments became corrupt. Most African leaders who had taken part in guerrilla campaigns before independence had been influenced by Marxist ideas, which often led them to set up one-party states as the only way to achieve progress. In many states, such as Kenya and Tanzania, this worked well, providing stable and effective government. On the other hand, since it was impossible to oppose such governments by legal means, violence was the only answer. Military coups to remove unpopular rulers became common. President Nkrumah of Ghana, for example, was removed by the army in 1966 after two assassination attempts had failed. Where the army was unable or unwilling to stage a coup, such as in Malawi, the one-party system flourished at the expense of freedom and genuine democracy.
(d) Economic and natural disasters
In the 1980s the whole of Africa was beset by economic and natural disasters. The world recession reduced demand for African exports such as oil, copper and cobalt, and there was a severe drought (1982–5) which caused crop failures, deaths of livestock, famine and starvation. The drought ended in 1986 and much of the continent had record harvests that year. However, by this time, Africa, like the rest of the world, was suffering from a severe debt crisis, and at the same time had been forced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to economize drastically in return for further loans. In a number of cases the IMF prescribed the ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Programme) which the country had to follow. Often this forced them to devalue their currency, and reduce food price subsidies, which led to increased food prices at a time when unemployment was rising and wages were falling. Governments were also forced to cut their spending on education, health and social services as part of the austerity programme. Table 26.2 in the next chapter shows how poor most of the African states were in comparison with the rest of the world.