Decolonisation and Political Socialisation with Reference to West Africa

Melvin Goldberg

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00007254

Decolonisation and Political Socialisation with Reference to West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

Melvin Goldberg

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Decolonisation in British and French West Africa presents some interesting parallers and contrasts. The pressures facing the most important colonial systems during and after World War 11 came from the two new superpowers — particularly the United States — nationalist movements, and internal dissensions. The war Seriously undermined the power of Britain and France and brought into question the moral right of one nation to rule over another. Initially both remained unconvinced about the merits of independence, and in fact the evidence suggests that considerable efforts were made to thwart the process of decolonisation. By the mid-1950s, however, Britain and France succumbed to the three pressures mentioned above, and rather than wait until the situation was uncontainable they chose to guide their colonies along an ‘approved’ path to independence.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 663 - 677

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00007254 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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^{Page 664 note 1} Pedler, Frederick, Main Currents of West African History, 1940–1978 (London, 1979), P. xi;Google Scholar and Rathbone, Richard, ‘The Transfer of Power in Ghana, 1945–1957’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1968, P. 56.Google Scholar

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^{Page 664 note 3} See Flint, John, ‘Planned Decolonisation and Its Failure in British Africa’, in African Affairs (London), 82, 328, 07 1983, Pp. 389–411;Google Scholar Robert Pearce, ‘The Colonial Office and Planned Decolonization in Africa ’, in ibid. 83, 330, January 1984, PP. 77–93; and Richard C. Crook ‘Decolonization, the Colonial State, and Chieftaincy in the Gold Coast’, in ibid. 85, 338, January 1986, Pp. 75–106.

^{Page 664 note 4} Flint, loc. cit. P. 405.

^{Page 664 note 5} White, Dorothy Shipley, Black Africa and de Guallt: from the French Empire to Independence (University park and London, 1979), P. 122.Google Scholar In 1942 Amery, Leo stated that ‘smashing Hitler is only a means to the eseential end preserving the British Empire and all it stands for in the world’, quoted in Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay, 1941–1945 (Oxford, 1977), P. 33.Google Scholar

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^{Page 664 note 7} Ibid. P. 208.

^{Page 665 note 1} These views were by no means universal. The influential Navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Survey Committee supported the retention of Empire after World War 11. See Louis, op. cit. p. 6.

^{Page 665 note 2} Ibid. p. 19. According to Louis, p. 43, the Americans ‘found the French morally deplorable’.

^{Page 665 note 3} Ibid. pp. 3 and 21.

^{Page 665 note 4} Roosevelt had initially opposed the restoration of Indo-China to France, but by 1945, influenced by the conciliatory tone of the Brazzaville Conference, he changed his views; ibid. pp.28 and 42. By 1954 the Americans were underwriting the war in Vietnam and ‘American aid accounted for nearly 80 percent of French expenditures on the conflict’; Karnow, Stanley, Vietnam: a history (Harmondsworth, 1984), p. 170.Google Scholar

^{Page 665 note 5} Louis, op. cit. p. 22. churchill supported this view;Google Scholar seeibid. p. 8.

^{Page 665 note 6} Ibid. p. 28.

^{Page 665 note 7} White, op. cit. p. 83.

^{Page 665 note 8} Louis, op. cit. p. 22.

^{Page 666 note 1} Ibid. Pp. 14–15.

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^{Page 666 note 7} Louis, op. cit. Pp. 43–7; White, op. cit. p. 115 and Hargreaves, John D., ‘Assumptions, Expectations, and Plus: approaches to decolonisation in Sierra Leone’, in Morris-jone and Fishter (eds.), op. cit. Pp. 75–6.Google Scholar

^{Page 667 note 1} Quoted in Louis, op. cit. p. x.

^{Page 667 note 2} Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), p. 279.Google ScholarNordman, C. R., ‘Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa: the development of British colonial policy, 1938–1947’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1976, p. 8, suggests that ‘The age of decolonisation had arrived [in 1947]’.Google Scholar

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^{Page 668 note 1} Crook, loc. cit. p. 77. See also Flint, loc. cit. p. 390, who claims that ‘The element of nationalism played no part …[in the British decision to decolonise]’.

^{Page 668 note 2} Louis, op. cit. pp. 123–4.

^{Page 668 note 3} Ibid. p. 129.

^{Page 668 note 4} Nordman, op. cit. p. ii.

^{Page 668 note 5} Louis, op. cit. p. 133. See also Flint, loc. cit.

^{Page 668 note 6} Quoted in White, op. cit. p. 115.

^{Page 669 note 1} Ibid. p. 139.

^{Page 669 note 2} Hopkins, op. cit. p. 269.

^{Page 669 note 3} White, op. cit. p. 2; Mortimer, op. cit. p. 72.

^{Page 669 note 4} Smith, op. cit. p. 25.

^{Page 669 note 5} Harrison, loc. cit. p. 85

^{Page 669 note 6} In 1946 Thorez stated ‘that the Communist Party under no circumstances wished to be considered as the eventual liquidator of the French position in Indo-China and that he ardently wished to see the French flag fly over all corners of the French Union’, quoted in Mortimer, The Rise of the French Communist Party, p. 349. A Vietnamese aid to Ho Chi Minh recounted to Karnow, op. cit. p. 154, that in his view the French communists ‘were more nationalistic than ideological’; see also ibid. pp. 152 and 159. Smith argues, op. cit. pp. 76–7, that after the war the communists adopted a cautious anti-colonial stance, firstly in order to maintain allies at home, and secondly out of fear that the Anglo-Americans would fill the vacuum left by the French.

^{Page 669 note 7} The P.C.F.'s influence declined after it left the French Government in 1947. Post, Ken, The New States of West Africa (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 22.Google Scholar

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^{Page 670 note 2} Ibid. pp. 275–9.

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^{Page 670 note 4} Harrison, loc. cit pp. 83–5.

^{Page 670 note 5} Mortimer, France and the Africans, pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

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^{Page 671 note 3} Mortimer, France and the Africans, pp. 217–18.

^{Page 671 note 4} Austin, loc. cit. p. 4.

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^{Page 672 note 3} Quoted in ibid. p. 127.

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^{Page 673 note 5} Mortimer, France and the Africans, p. 31.

^{Page 673 note 6} Nordman, op. cit. p. iii.

^{Page 674 note 1} Quoted in ibid. p. 115. However, as documented by Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana, Vol. 1, The Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), ‘The Idea of Elective Representation, 1918–23’, pp. 435–41, as early as 1921 ‘the Aboriginal unofficial members conference in Accra’ was pressing for ‘three representatives (including one European)’ on the Executive Council.Google Scholar

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^{Page 674 note 4} Hargreaves. cit. p. 94.

^{Page 674 note 5} Crook, loc. cit. p. 99.

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^{Page 675 note 1} Martin, Guy, ‘The Historical, Economic, and Political Bases of France's African Policy’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 23, 2 06 1985, p. 191.Google Scholar

^{Page 675 note 2} Foltz, op. cit. p. 69. See also Mortimer, The Rise of the French Communist Party, pp. 157–63.Google Scholar

^{Page 675 note 3} Mortimer, France and the Africans, pp. 244–5 and 217–18.Google Scholar

^{Page 675 note 4} Ibid. pp. 331–3.

^{Page 676 note 1} Jeffries, Richard, Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: the railwaymen of Sekondi (Cambridge, 1978), p. 59.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{Page 676 note 2} Rathbone, op. cit. p. 152.

^{Page 676 note 3} Jeffries, op. cit. p. 40.

^{Page 676 note 4} Hargreaves, loc. cit. p. 94.

^{Page 676 note 5} Ibid. p. 95.

^{Page 676 note 6} Ibid. p. 96.

^{Page 676 note 7} Parry to Rita Hinden, quoted in ibid.

^{Page 676 note 8} Hargreaves, loc. cit. p. 97.

^{Page 676 note 9} Mortimer, France and the Africans p. 247.Google Scholar

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