The Black man's burden : Africa and the curse of the nation-state by Davidson Basil 1914-2010

Author:Davidson, Basil, 1914-2010 [Davidson, Basil, 1914-2010]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Estado nacional, National state, Africa -- Relaciones étnicas, Africa -- Politics and government -- 1960-, Africa -- Ethnic relations, Nation-state, Ethnic relations, Politics and government, Natievorming, Rassenverhoudingen, Intertribale betrekkingen, Nationalitätenstaat, Rassenbeziehung, Ethnische Beziehung, Ethnizität, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat, Stamm (Ethnologie)
Publisher: New York : Times Books
Published: 1992-05-06T19:00:00+00:00

Basil Davidson

states—was precisely what the colonial governments were "here" for, even while it certainly never occurred to anyone in power that the "neocolonialist" nation-state network they had in mind could be properly comparable with Moscow's network.

What Mitchell thought a mere illusion was precisely what came about. By 1963 each of the three major East African territories had declared for independence as so many "Bulgarias": Tanganyika in 1961, Uganda in 1962, and Kenya in 1963. Nya-saland, as Malawi, followed suit in 1964, and so did Northern Rhodesia as Zambia. Elsewhere the French, having lost their war in Algeria after awarding independence to Morocco and Tunisia (in 1956), backed away from all previous schemes and forecasts; in i960, almost overnight, they recognized the independence of fourteen sub-Saharan colonies.

This gave rise to understandable African rejoicing as huge inherent problems were swallowed or thrust aside. In the realm of Islam, for example, canon law might continue to recognize only one and indivisible Umma Muhamadiyya, one family of Islam; but separate and separatist nation-state-forming movements nonetheless made headway against it. They had to do this, in the prominent Arabist G. E. von Grunebaum's striking phrase, "as hostile children of the West," 17 and would eventually provoke an Islamic "fundamentalism" of explosive and therefore blind reaction. But they still marched forward as though meanwhile they were the manifest legatees of all that was desirable and right.

It is consequently fruitless to believe that the end of political empire was a program arranged and designed to give colonized peoples "the best possible start" to their independence. Much was said and done, true enough, to present the imperial with-

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