Anticolonialism in Africa

The development of nationalism was not uniform throughout the countries of Asia and Africa. The majority of nationalist movements, however, roughly followed a distinct pattern. First, there were local protest movements; some were culturally based, while others were created by the local elite to protest against local and specific grievances, usually economic. Second, there was the crucial period of mass nationalism. In most countries of Asia and Africa, this occurred after World War II. In Africa, this rough pattern applies to all the countries that attained their political independence before 1975. The same is true in Asia, except for those countries that secured their freedom after protracted armed struggle led by communist parties. This constitutes what can be characterized as the first and dominant phase of African and Asian nationalism.

The second phase applies in Africa to the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, in addition to Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia. In Asia, it applies to China and Vietnam, even though their wars of liberation had achieved key victories before 1975. In almost every case, political independence in the second phase was achieved after protracted guerrilla warfare. Liberation movements in China, Vietnam, and former Portuguese colonies in Africa moved to be more precise in their definition of national liberation and societal development. Further, they adopted a Marxist ideology as a guide to their struggle, much more deliberately and consistently than had the majority of the nationalist movements in the first phase. Although the nationalist movements in the second phase did not undertake to pursue identical policies, they nonetheless embarked on a far more detailed socioeconomic analysis of colonial and imperial domination.

In Africa, these Marxist-leaning movements were influenced by the revolutionary thought of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). In his most famous book, The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre, 1961; Eng. trans., 1963), Fanon argued passionately that true decolonization must be the product of violence. Colonialism, "created and maintained by violence," could be truly uprooted only through "mass participation in violent decolonization." This violence was to be the product of an organized revolutionary movement composed of urban intellectuals and peasants. Fanon also argued that revolutionary violence against the colonialists was "a cleansing force" for individual participants: "it frees the native from his inferiority complex and his despair and inaction." The meaning and implications of this observation continue to generate ideological and intellectual controversy. Still, it should be said that Fanon's formulation was not a "lyrical celebration of violence" (see L. Adele Jinadu) but rather a strategy to be employed by the colonized in pursuit of true liberation.

After World War II, European powers were not eager to liquidate their empires in Asia and Africa. Although drastically weakened by the war, neither Britain nor France (the major imperial powers) seemed anxious to grant political independence to their colonies. Indeed, the dominant postcolonial policies seemed to favor reassertion of imperial authority. To this end, France fought costly wars in Vietnam and Algeria as it tried unsuccessfully to suppress nationalism. Britain fought against a determined anticolonial movement in Malaya, as well as against the Mau Mau nationalist peasant revolt in Kenya. Even in those colonies where there was little or no armed resistance, European powers were quick to employ brutal force to try to stem the tide of nationalism.

Colonial administrators routinely dismissed the legitimacy of Asian and African nationalism. Any stirring of nationalism was seen as an alien, artificial, almost inappropriate creation, imposed by Asian or African elites on unwilling or otherwise ignorant masses. This was a disastrously mistaken claim and belief. It would have been impossible for nationalist activists to achieve any success without the sustained and spirited support of those masses. The ideological strife of the Cold War, however, led many colonial administrators to mistakenly view nationalist agitation as the unfolding of a global communist conspiracy.

In the end, imperial maneuvers, brutal force, and concessions failed to derail the drive toward decolonization. In the political climate of the postwar years, imperial powers were forced to see that there could be no compromise between direct imperial domination and the basic, nonnegotiable demands of nationalism.

On balance, it is fair to conclude that internal factors in each colony proved the chief determinant in the nature of the struggle for, and attainment of, political independence. Nationalist and revolutionary movements were essentially local in inspiration and objectives. These movements were not "exportable commodities," says Amilcar Cabral, but rather were "determined and conditioned by the historical reality of each people." This underscores the vitality and integrity of Asian and African nationalism and amply demonstrates (in Geoffrey Barraclough's words) that "the will, the courage, the determination, and the deep human motivation" that propelled it forward "owed little, if anything, to Western example."