The Rise of African Nationalism
Senior 6 · History
The Rise of African Nationalism
Lesson 1 of 5
25 min
In August 1941 the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, met on warships off Newfoundland. On 14 August they published a short list of war aims, the Atlantic Charter. One sentence in it travelled much further than its authors intended: it reached newspapers, classrooms and political meetings in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and Dakar. Read it, and ask yourself who the authors meant by "all peoples", and who in Africa read it as a promise.
Important
Source A: the Atlantic Charter, 14 August 1941 (third point)
"Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them."
Joint declaration by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 14 August 1941.
What happened next. On 9 September 1941 Churchill told the House of Commons that the Charter had in mind mainly the European nations conquered by Nazi Germany, and that self-government in the British Empire was a separate question. African writers disagreed. In 1943 a delegation of West African newspaper editors led by Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria presented a memorandum in London, The Atlantic Charter and British West Africa, that asked for the Charter to be applied to Africa as well.
Definition
Nationalism: the belief that a people who share a land, history or identity should govern themselves, and the political movement built on that belief.
African nationalism: the movement of colonised Africans to end foreign rule and build self-governing states. Example: the Convention People's Party's demand for "Self-Government Now" in the Gold Coast in 1949.
Self-determination: the right of a people to choose its own government and political status freely.
Decolonisation: the process by which colonies became independent states, through negotiation, armed struggle or both.
Pan-Africanism: the idea that Africans and people of African descent share a common destiny and should work together for freedom and unity.
Figure 1. Independence dates of selected African states, drawn to scale by Ganzaa. Lines above the bar and below it are only for spacing.
Before 1945 only Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia and the Union of South Africa (ruled by its white minority) were independent states in Africa. Figure 1 shows how fast that changed. In 1960 alone, seventeen states became independent, which is why 1960 is called the "Year of Africa". Rwanda and Burundi followed on 1 July 1962. A historian looks at a pattern like this and asks: what changed after 1945, both inside Africa and in the wider world, that made independence possible so quickly, and why did the last colonies in the south take thirty more years?
| Cause | How it fed nationalism | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Economic exploitation | forced labour, heavy taxes and low prices for cash crops made colonial rule felt in every household | the cutting-out of diseased cocoa trees in the Gold Coast in the 1940s angered farmers |
| Land alienation | the loss of land to settlers created landless, angry people ready to join a movement | the "White Highlands" of Kenya, reserved for European farmers |
| Racial discrimination | the colour bar in jobs, pay, housing and schools humiliated even educated Africans | separate pay scales for African and European civil servants |
| Western education | mission and overseas education produced leaders who used Europe's own ideas of liberty against it | Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Nnamdi Azikiwe all studied in Britain or the USA |
| Ex-servicemen | soldiers who had fought for the empire returned with new skills, wider experience and unpaid promises | the Christiansborg crossroads shooting in Accra, 28 February 1948 (case study below) |
| Towns and workers | growing towns gathered unemployed school-leavers and wage workers who could be organised | trade unions in the railways and mines of West and Central Africa |
| Religious protest | independent African churches rejected European control of Christianity | Simon Kimbangu's movement in the Belgian Congo from 1921 |
| Earlier resistance | memories of resistance and early associations kept the idea of freedom alive | the National Congress of British West Africa (1920); Harry Thuku's association in Kenya (1921) |
Thousands of soldiers from the Gold Coast had served with the British in East Africa and Burma during the Second World War. By 1948 many were unemployed and still waiting for the allowances and pensions they had been promised. At the same time, the people of Accra were boycotting European-owned shops over high prices, a boycott led by the chief Nii Kwabena Bonne II.
On 28 February 1948 a group of ex-servicemen marched to Christiansborg Castle, the governor's residence, to present a petition. A police officer ordered his men to fire, and three ex-servicemen, Sergeant Cornelius Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe and Private Odartey Lamptey, were killed. Riots and looting followed in Accra and other towns. The government arrested six leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention, including Kwame Nkrumah and J. B. Danquah, who became known as the "Big Six".
The British government sent a commission of inquiry (the Watson Commission), which reported that the colony's constitution was out of date. Its report led to a committee of Africans that drafted a new constitution and, in 1951, to the first general election under it (Lesson 3).
Analysis. The case shows how causes combine: an economic grievance (prices, unpaid allowances), a war cause (ex-servicemen), a political trigger (the shooting) and a colonial response (inquiry and reform) that opened the door to a mass party.
Warning
Two common mistakes. (1) Writing that the colonial powers simply "gave" independence. Independence was won by African pressure, even where it was finally negotiated. (2) Writing that nationalism began in 1945. Resistance, associations and newspapers existed long before; what changed after 1945 was that nationalism became a mass movement in a world that no longer accepted empires.
Tip
Organise causes in two ways at once. Sort them into internal (inside Africa) and external (the wider world), and into long-term (exploitation, education) and short-term (the war, a shooting, a new government in London). The best answers then judge which mattered most and say why, for example: "external changes made independence possible, but African mass action decided when it came."
Important
Discuss. Churchill said the Atlantic Charter was not meant for the British Empire, yet Africans used it anyway. What does this tell you about the power of ideas once they are published? Can you think of a later document that Africans used in the same way?
CrashCourse: "Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant: Crash Course World History #40" (about 12 minutes). Watch for the reasons John Green gives for why empires collapsed after 1945, and note which of them appear in the table of external causes above.
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the timeline (Figure 1), the table, the case study and the exercises.
