shock. African soldiers in the French army witnessed their colonial sovereign, France, defeated and conquered. African soldiers in the British army saw the imperial capital, London, bombed; they saw whites seized with panic, fleeing, pleading, sobbing. They saw ragged, hungry whites, crying for bread. As they moved east, fighting white Germans alongside white Englishmen, they encountered columns of white people dressed in stripes, people-skeletons, people-rags.
The shock the African experienced as scenes from the white man’s war passed before his eyes was all the more powerful because earlier the inhabitants of Africa (with few exceptions, and in the case of the Congo, for example, none) were not permitted to travel to Europe, or anywhere else beyond their continent. And so their views of the lives of white men was based only on the luxurious circumstances whites enjoyed in the colonies.
And another thing: the inhabitant of Africa in the middle of the twentieth century had no sources of information other than what a neighbor, his village chief, or a colonial administrator told him. Therefore he knew of the world only as much as he was able to glean from his immediate surroundings, or what he heard from others during an evening’s chat by the fire.
The veterans of World War II who returned from Europe to Africa shortly reappear in the ranks of various movements and parties fighting for national independence. The number of these organizations swells rapidly; they spring up like mushrooms after a rain. They have various points of view, and various goals.
Those from the French colonies initially make limited demands. They do not speak yet of freedom. They ask only that all the inhabitants of the colony be made French citizens. Paris rejects this. Yes, someone who has been educated in French culture, who raises himself to its level—the so-called
évolué
—can become a French citizen. But such individuals will turn out to be exceptions.
The organizations in the British colonies are more radical. Their inspiration and program are the bold visions of the future as formulated by the descendants of slaves, Afro-American intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. They called their doctrine pan-Africanism. Its principal creators: the activist Alexander Crumwell, the writer W. E. B. Du Bois, and the journalist Marcus Garvey (this last one from Jamaica). They differed among themselves, but agreed on two points: (1) that all blacks in the world—be they in South America or in Africa—constitute a single race, a single culture, and they should be proud of the color of their skin; (2) that all of Africa should be independent and united. Their slogan was “Africa for Africans!” On other matters they differed, W. E. B. Du Bois for example proclaimed that blacks should remain in the countries in which they now live, while Garvey held that all blacks, wherever they may be, should return to Africa. For a time he even sold photographs of Haile Selassie, proclaiming each was a valid return visa. He died in 1940 never having seen Africa himself.
A young activist and theoretician from Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, became an enthusiast of pan-Africanism while studying in America. He returned home in 1947 and founded a political party into which he recruited former World War II combatants as well as the young. At a rally in Accra he issued a war cry: “Independence now!” In those days, in colonial Africa, this resounded like a bomb exploding. Ten years later, Ghana became the first independent African country south of the Sahara, and Accra immediately became the provisional, informal center of all movements, ideas, and activities for the entire continent.
The town burned with liberation fever, and people flocked here from all over Africa. Journalists from around the world also arrived. They came out of curiosity, uncertainty, and even the fear growing in Europe’s capitals—what if Africa
The shock the African experienced as scenes from the white man’s war passed before his eyes was all the more powerful because earlier the inhabitants of Africa (with few exceptions, and in the case of the Congo, for example, none) were not permitted to travel to Europe, or anywhere else beyond their continent. And so their views of the lives of white men was based only on the luxurious circumstances whites enjoyed in the colonies.
And another thing: the inhabitant of Africa in the middle of the twentieth century had no sources of information other than what a neighbor, his village chief, or a colonial administrator told him. Therefore he knew of the world only as much as he was able to glean from his immediate surroundings, or what he heard from others during an evening’s chat by the fire.
The veterans of World War II who returned from Europe to Africa shortly reappear in the ranks of various movements and parties fighting for national independence. The number of these organizations swells rapidly; they spring up like mushrooms after a rain. They have various points of view, and various goals.
Those from the French colonies initially make limited demands. They do not speak yet of freedom. They ask only that all the inhabitants of the colony be made French citizens. Paris rejects this. Yes, someone who has been educated in French culture, who raises himself to its level—the so-called
évolué
—can become a French citizen. But such individuals will turn out to be exceptions.
The organizations in the British colonies are more radical. Their inspiration and program are the bold visions of the future as formulated by the descendants of slaves, Afro-American intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. They called their doctrine pan-Africanism. Its principal creators: the activist Alexander Crumwell, the writer W. E. B. Du Bois, and the journalist Marcus Garvey (this last one from Jamaica). They differed among themselves, but agreed on two points: (1) that all blacks in the world—be they in South America or in Africa—constitute a single race, a single culture, and they should be proud of the color of their skin; (2) that all of Africa should be independent and united. Their slogan was “Africa for Africans!” On other matters they differed, W. E. B. Du Bois for example proclaimed that blacks should remain in the countries in which they now live, while Garvey held that all blacks, wherever they may be, should return to Africa. For a time he even sold photographs of Haile Selassie, proclaiming each was a valid return visa. He died in 1940 never having seen Africa himself.
A young activist and theoretician from Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, became an enthusiast of pan-Africanism while studying in America. He returned home in 1947 and founded a political party into which he recruited former World War II combatants as well as the young. At a rally in Accra he issued a war cry: “Independence now!” In those days, in colonial Africa, this resounded like a bomb exploding. Ten years later, Ghana became the first independent African country south of the Sahara, and Accra immediately became the provisional, informal center of all movements, ideas, and activities for the entire continent.
The town burned with liberation fever, and people flocked here from all over Africa. Journalists from around the world also arrived. They came out of curiosity, uncertainty, and even the fear growing in Europe’s capitals—what if Africa
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