B009THJ1WI EBOK

by Young, Crawford

  124. Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Robert H. Bates, When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  125. Eliphesis Mukonoweshuro, “The Politics of Squalor and Dependency: Chronic Political Instability and Economic Collapse in the Comoro Islands,” African Affairs 89.357 (1990): 555–77. Bereft of resources and suffering endemic mediocrity in political leadership, the author argues that this micropolity survives by auctioning its sovereignty to France, South Africa or the Gulf States. Remittances from the diaspora provide 24% of GDP, and a third of the population of Mayotte, a Comoran island that chose incorporation into France, have fled from Comoros. Still, after nineteen successful or failed coups in its first three decades of independence, and despite a secession attempt by one of its three island territories (thwarted by the AU), Comoros had its first electoral change of ruler in 2006. Recent reports on its performance by the IMF have been more positive. Africa Research Bulletin, Economic, Financial, and Technical Series, 49.2 (2012): 19486.

  126. The thoughtful definitional discussion in Naomi Chazan, Peter Lewis, Robert A. Mortimer, Donald Rothchild, and Stephen John Stedman, Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), and Ruth Berins Collier, Regimes in Tropical Africa: Changing Forms of Supremacy, 1945–1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), is helpful is conceptualizing regime.

  127. Cynthia Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers: State Sovereignty in Divided Societies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980).

  128. Coleman and Rosberg, Political Parties and National Integration, 5–111.

  129. Chazan et al., Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, 137–58.

  130. Clement Moore, Politics in North Africa: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (Boston: Little Brown, 1970); Clement Moore, Tunisia since Independence: The Dynamics of One-Party Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965).

  131. H. E. Chalabi and Juan J. Linz, eds., Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

  132. Médard was an early contributor to the “big man” concept; see “L’état patrimonialisé,” 25–36. In Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), Jan Vansina shows the deep historical roots of a “big man” tradition; periodically in stateless settings an extraordinary individual would arise who was able to build a small-scale polity through his skills in assembling resources and in weaving customary worldviews into discourse that legitimated his personal leadership and by his savvy in acknowledging the exercise of local rule.

  133. Schatzberg skillfully documents the ubiquity of the father metaphor in Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa.

  134. W. Howard Wriggins, The Ruler’s Imperative: Strategies for Political Survival in Asia and Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 12.

  135. Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

  136. Samuel Decalo offers chilling comparative portraits in Psychoses of Power: African Personal Dictatorships (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989).

  137. Robert Klitgard’s engaging memoir of his experiences as an international aid worker, Tropical Gangsters: One Man’s Experience with Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1990). See also Max Liniger-Gomez, La démocradura: Dictature couflée, démocratie truquée (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992).

  138. Among the many works on Uganda in the Museveni age, see Crawford Young, “After the Fall: State Rehabilitation in Uganda,” in Beyond State Crisis?, 465–86; Phares Mutibwa, Uganda since Independence: A Study of Unfulfilled Hopes (Kampala: Fountain, 1992), Justus Mugaju and J. Oloka-Oloyango, eds., No-Party Democracy in Uganda: Myths and Realities (Kampala: Fountain, 2000), and Tripp, Museveni’s Uganda.

  139. Young and Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State, 276–325. Another example was the $6 billion liquefied natural gas project in Nigeria, of which former Haliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was the prime contractor. In February 2009, KBR and Haliburton were forced to pay $579 million in criminal and civil penalties under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribes paid to dictator Sani Abacha and his two successors from 1995 to 2005 (“Nigeria: Seize the Moment,” Africa Research Bulletin, Economic Financial and Technical Series, 46.2 [2009]: 18160).

  140. Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, “The Effective State in Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Hopeless Chimera or Possible Dream?,” in Beyond State Crisis?, 465, 483.

  141. This is the thesis of Lange and Rueschmeyer’s States and Development.

  142. World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997).

  143. John Campbell, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink (Lapham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). See also Smith, A Culture of Corruption; Michela A. Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

  CHAPTER 3. DECOLONIZATION, THE INDEPENDENCE SETTLEMENT, AND COLONIAL LEGACY

  1. Cited in David Fieldhouse, “Arrested Development in Anglophone Africa,” in Decolonization and African Independence: The Transfers of Power, 1960–1980, ed. Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 135–36.

  2. John Darwin, “The Third British Empire? The Dominion Idea in Imperial Politics,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 4, ed. Judith M. Brown and William Roger Louis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 70.

  3. Frederick Cooper, Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 36–38.

  4. In the 1960 General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples; see Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 33–36

  5. Cited by Anthony Clayton, “‘Deceptive Might’: Imperial Defence and Security, 1900–1968,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, 280. In reality, Britain benefited greatly from the export earnings of its African colonies during World War II and squeezed them energetically from 1945 to 1951 to finance postwar recovery; both Britain and France drew heavily on African military manpower. However, the “balance sheets of imperialism” suggested at best ambivalent evidence on the profitability of colonies. By 1957, Prime Minister Macmillan queried the Colonial Office on the cost-benefit ratio of seeking to defer independence; the “official mind” consensus was that there was no economic case for delay, and the strategic arguments were not compelling (David K. Fieldhouse, Black Africa, 1945–80: Economic Decolonization and Arrested Development [London: Allen and Unwin, 1986], 8).

  6. Saadia Touval, The Boundary Politics of Independent Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 21.

  7. Touval, Boundary Politics, 54–57.

  8. In the Togo case, the main driver for rejoining British Togoland with French-administered Togo was Ewe ethno-nationalism, which in the long run was trumped by territoriality. Over time an initially precarious attachment of Ghanaian Ewe to a Ghana nationality deepened, and the border deepened their differences with Togolese Ewe. At the same time, the border and shared ethnicity facilitated a prosperous commerce, both legal and illicit. For detail see Paul Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Border: The Life of the Borderlands since 1914 (Oxford, UK: James Currey, 2002). On Anglophone Cameroon, see Piet Konings and Francis Nyamnjoh, “The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon,” Journal of Modern African Studies 35.2 (1997): 207–29.

  9. Part of the observation of the centennial was a major co
nference in Dakar, where the sense of loss was palpable. See the collected papers in Charles Becker, Saliou Mbaye, and Ibrahima Thioub, eds., AOF: Réalités et heritages: Sociétés ouest-africaines et ordre colonial, 1895–1960 (Dakar: Direction des Archives du Sénégal), 1997. The best study of the breakup of AOF is Joseph-Roger de Benoist, La balkanization de l’Afrique Occidentale Française (Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1979).

  10. As Raymond Pourtier points out, Gabon territorial identity, whose negative point of reference was Brazzaville and the AEF institutions, took form very early, initially among European settlers and soon spreading to the first generation of educated Gabonese (Le Gabon, vol. 1 [Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989], 76). Pourtier also notes that a 1937 decentralizing reform of AEF provided “the spatial dynamic which led to the independence, not of AEF, but of its constituent territories” (131).

  11. On the power transfer in Rwanda and Burundi, see especially René Lemarchand’s classic Rwanda and Burundi (London: Pall Mall, 1970) and the various works of Jean-Pierre Chrétien, particularly The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History, trans. Scott Straus (New York: Zone, 2003). During the colonial period, the Ruanda-Urundi trust had been administratively integrated with the Belgian Congo. Into the mid-1950s, some Belgians and early Congolese nationalists assumed that the territories would remain united with the Belgian Congo. Retrospectively, following the genocidal ethnic strife in both countries, some counterfactual speculation suggested that had Tutsi and Hutu remained within the larger territorial frame of colonial Tanganyika as successor to the rest of German East Africa, the sharpness of the ethnic confrontation might have been diluted (Ali Mazrui, personal communication).

  12. The dismal postcolonial performance of Comoros reinforced Mayotte preference for the French connection; by 2008 the island was clamoring for total incorporation as a full overseas department of France, subsequently confirmed by referendum and implemented (Le Monde, 29 August 2008).

  13. Randall Fegley, Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy (New York: Peter Lang, 1989); Max Liniger-Goumaz, Small Is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea (London: Hurst, 1988).

  14. D. Anthony Low, “The End of the British Empire in Africa,” in Decolonization and African Independence, 43.

  15. Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, which had well-developed state institutions before colonial occupation, were an exception.

  16. The bizarre gymnastics of franchise manipulation as a means of marginalizing the overwhelming African majority in an ostensibly “democratic” decolonization constitution reached ludicrous heights in the Central African Federation, which established different devices in each of its component territories. For franchise details, see David C. Mulford, Zambia: The Politics of Independence (London: Oxford University Press), on Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Colin Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1959), on Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia).

  17. For detail on the Congo Statut des villes and its application, see Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 106–9.

  18. A compelling example of this phenomenon is provided by Herbert Weiss, Political Protest in the Congo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967).

  19. Ireland in a number of respects was a pacesetter in the annals of decolonization; see Deirdre McMahon, “Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, 138–62.

  20. Joseph-Roger de Benoist, a scholar-journalist in Dakar closely connected to the AOF political universe, argues that until the last minute most of the political elite (though not radical intellectuals and students) still preferred some loose federated attachment to France to full independence (personal communication and La balkanization).

  21. Many believed that ABAKO President Joseph Kasavubu had explicitly demanded independence. Benoït Verhaegen shows that his actual words were “immediate emancipation,” although the term was clearly a code word for independence (L’ABAKO et l’indépendance du Congo Belge: Dix ans de nationalisme kongo (1950–1960) [Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003], 151–62).

  22. Young, Politics in the Congo, 140–83.

  23. The earliest example is perhaps Liberia in 1847, though it was not strictly speaking decolonized. The American Colonization Society, a private body created in 1816 that received some indirect state assistance to promote African settlement of freed slaves, was the umbrella authority from the first settlement in 1822 until 1847. A convention of Americo-Liberians then simply declared independence and drafted its own constitution. See Tom Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), D. Elwood Dunn and S. Byron Tarr, Liberia: A National Polity in Transition (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988), and J. Gus Liebenow, Liberia: The Evolution of Privilege (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969).

  24. See, inter alia, Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia, 8–40.

  25. I omit the case of Ethiopian independence, which occurred following its liberation from Italian occupation in 1941 by British-led forces. Italian colonial ambitions in Ethiopia lasted a mere six years, and following Italy’s expulsion there was a simple restoration of the former regime rather than a decolonization.

  26. For a succinct account, see M. W. Daly, “Egypt,” in Cambridge History of Africa, 8 vols., ed. J. D. Fage and Roland Oliver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975– 84), 7:743–54.

  27. William Roger Louis, “Libyan Independence, 1951: The Creation of a Client State,” in Decolonization and African Independence, 159.

  28. The other two Italian colonies, Eritrea and Somalia, also had their fate determined by great-power politics and UN maneuvering. Eritrea, through the confluence of astute Ethiopian diplomacy, American geopolitical interests, and international bargaining became an appendage of Ethiopia, soon to perceive itself, as chapter 7 details, as subordinated in a quasi-colonial relationship leading to a three–decade-long liberation war. Somalia was returned temporarily to Italian tutelage in 1950, but it was given a firm international deadline of ten years to prepare for independence.

  29. This and other encyclopedic detail on the UN-administered creation of a Libyan state is found in Adrian Pelt, Libyan Independence and the United Nations: A Case of Planned Decolonization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 673–74. See also Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).

  30. John D. Hargreaves, The End of Colonial Rule in West Africa (London: Macmillan, 1979), 41.

  31. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 4.

  32. This somewhat simplifies the path from the 1958 referendums to 1960 independence; for details, see Keith Panter-Brick, “Independence, French Style,” in Decolonization and African Independence, 73–104.

  33. Jan Vansina cites earlier little-known evidence of évolué discontents during World War II, in the form of a letter to “the US army” invoking the Atlantic Charter as a basis for a claim to Congolese rights; see Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880–1960 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 270–71.

  34. Paul Lomami-Tshibamba, “Quelle sera notre place dans le monde de demain?,” La Voix du Congolais 2 (March–April 1945): 47–51. A widely-known tract of évolués in 1944 also had asked for due recognition for their wartime loyalty and mastery of colonial linguistic and cultural norms, insisting that the educated elites could not be treated like “the ignorant and backward masses” (Young, Politics in the Congo, 74–75, 274–75).

  35. For more on bula matari as a metaphor for the Belgian colonial state, see Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 1–40.

  36. At a crucial point in the negotiations, a leading opposition representative, Senator Henri Roland, joined the Congolese in arguing that independence had to be complete and unqualified; in the metaphor utilized
, “all the keys to the trousseau” had to be handed to the new Congolese regime on independence day.

  37. Many years later a key Congolese participant confirmed rumors prevalent at the time that the two leading Congolese leaders, Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu, were mandated by their colleagues to suggest a delay in independence, with immediate formation instead of a provisional Congolese government for a couple of years. Belgium insisted that by that point there was no turning back. Justin-Marie Bomboko, “Vers l’indépendance: Perceptions congolaises,” in Congo 1960: L’échec d’une decolonization, ed. Colette Braekman (Brussels: GRIP, 2010), 81.

  38. Young, Politics in the Congo, 402, 443–46.

  39. This calculus was not entirely wrong, as confirmed by one of the most gifted intellectuals in the first Congolese government, Thomas Kanza: “The first meetings of our Council of Ministers were unforgettable. Our discussions were of the most desultory kind. All of us were happy, or at least cheerful and satisfied, at being ministers. . . . We argued about offices, about suitable and available sites for them, and how they could be shared among us. We discussed the allocation of ministerial cars; the choosing and allotting of ministerial residences; arrangements for our families and their travel. . . . Though we sat so comfortably in our sumptuous official cars, driven by uniformed military chauffeurs, and looked s though we were ruling this large and beautiful country, we were in fact ruling nothing and a prey to whatever might happen” (Conflict in the Congo [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1972], 31–32).

  40. Spain, though ostensibly neutral in World War II, was suspected of Axis sympathies, which led to an extended diplomatic quarantine. The first break in its international isolation came with the establishment of American air bases in 1953; however, European states blocked entry into NATO until 1982, and European Community membership was granted only in 1986.

  41. Spain also held minor territories in Africa: the small enclave of Ifni on the southern Morocco coast, ceded back to Morocco in 1969, and the tiny Mediterranean coastal settlements of Ceuta and Melilla, which remain under Spanish rule over Moroccan protest to this day.