Modern Africa: The Pains Of Birth

...and, incidentally, English preferential use of colony-earned dollars to help rescue her economy after the Second World War would remain, along with other, more imponderable obligations, an undischarged debt...

...The history of UAC in Nigeria goes back to the original chartered company so intimately associated with the economic and political history of the country...

...The dynamic cultural context should always be considered...

...This cumulative development of international inequality which Myrdal sketches as the present trend is not only perilous politically, inviting the most ugly forms of behavior, but an anthropologist is obliged to add —it is thoroughly destructive of culture...

...In Ghana the sentiment for African union and the critical internal position of Nkrumah, which are of course related phenomena, do not represent antidemocratic or totalitarian tendencies in any philosophic or programmatic sense of those terms...

...Subsequent financial transactions resulted in Lever Bros...

...they laugh at the wrong times at the paroxysms of nations in birth, and assume an insufferable and unjustified air which can easily be interpreted as "white" superiority...

...timber, 3,191...

...British banks, such as Bank of British West Africa, Ltd., and Barclay's (D...

...For the struggle for national unity is not only territorial and ethnic, it is social and economic also...

...it is the concrete denial of our conception of freedom, justice, truth and mercy...

...thus to break down archaic oligarchies of wealth and privilege which impede the distribution and slow the formation of capital...

...For example, bribery, and related practices, in our society tend to be outright commercial transactions, betrayals of principle...

...The United Africa Company of Nigeria, Ltd., popularly referred to as UAC, is responsible for much of the total import and export trade of Nigeria...

...But it should be borne in mind that a bureaucracy settling in after a revolution can be cleansed by the vigilance of the people and their executive representatives...

...One possible remedy for this would seem to be the economic union of the primary producers, the new nations...

...Part of the heritage of colonialism has been the strategic overdevelopment of connections between metropolitan power and ex-colony, and the underdevelopment of political, economic, and social relations among the colonies themselves, even when the latter were territorially contiguous...

...A typical view is that of G. Udegbunem Meniru, a Nigerian student in the United States, who, in his treatise African-American Cooperation, 1954, Libertarian Press, Glen Gardner, N. J., stated: "The impact of large European combines in the internal trade with their monopolistic tendencies have restrained independent African traders from large-scale undertakings especially in the fields of exporting and importing...

...The further widening of the socio-economic, and cultural, gap depends upon the free play of national and international markets, either unregulated and thus working "naturally" to the disadvantage of the poorer nations or actively regulated in favor of the rich...

...Communications outside of this predictable colonial pattern hardly exist...

...it is, by no means, the dead slogan of a perishing arrangement between the politically strong and weak...

...And this is true despite its relative prosperity at this time, based on judicious use of money made in what has been from 1947 until recently an unusually favorable cocoa market...

...but it is no more than that which has always been the gamey aspect of politics itself...

...Properly to grasp the attitudes of the more dedicated African leaders—Azikiwe, Nkrumah, Toure, Mboya, Nyerere, Banda—demands our comprehension of their struggle against this massive heritage of colonialism, of their quest for what Nkrumah is fond of calling "the African personality...

...In all western nations this internal interference with economic forces has become a routine matter...

...Some of the activities, such as the sawmilling and plywood plant at Sapele of African Timber and Plywood (Nigeria), Ltd., a subsidiary of United Africa Company of Nigeria, Ltd., represent large-scale modern industrial ventures...

...When a metropolitan power disengages itself politically from a former colony, when "independence" is conferred upon the new nation, what is laid bare is neither a viable and modern political economy nor a series of self-sufficient primitive cultures, nor an archaic culture, but an awkward and random blend of all these elements...

...rather they are the imperatives of a movement that we in these federated and United States should be able to understand in the light of our own history—a movement away from a colonial economy and toward a more rational, independent, and sturdy union conceived to be in the best interests of ordinary Africans...

...And finally, the idea of political independence has irreversibly seized the underdeveloped peoples...

...On the contrary, we tend to eulogize their capacity to respond to the need for boundaries reflecting political and economic reality...

...To put the matter aphoristically, in the past a genuine culture of poverty was possible but in the present the familiar, mutually reinforcing factors of overpopulation, economic stagnation, political impotence and the loss of tradition threaten us with a vast poverty of culture among the lower class nations in the international class structure...

...to their chaotic diaspora, we are a problematical Jerusalem...

...Italics added.] The company continued vigorously to "open up" the upper reaches of the Niger River in Nigeria, and in 1886 it was granted a royal charter giving it sweeping power to administer the territories it had acquired by treaty or concession as well as exclusive rights to all mineral resources and royalties in these territories...

...This antagonism to Volta is a good example of how "traditional" economic, regional and cultural interests coalesce in opposing the central government, and, thus, converge to a classic position held in metropolitan quarters that underdeveloped areas maintain their role as primary producers, and that decentralization of political power and economic means be pursued along regional and "ethnic" lines...

...This widely, often deliberately misunderstood phrase can be taken to refer not only to the laughter and rhythm that continues to flow through everyday African life, but also to the intangible communalistic consciousness that survives among millions of ordinary Africans in spite of modern commercialism and the gross defections of colonially manipulated chiefs...

...Gunnar Myrdal's principle is pertinent...

...In the British West African areas, for example, the early growth and later ramifications of the metropolitan trading companies recapitulate the form and sub stance of colonial and post-colonial subordination...

...Should England join the Common Market and, in effect, abandon the Commonwealth both as an independent union dedicated to the strengthening of all its constituent economies, and as a potential, political third force, the rationale for West African Federation would grow even more impressive...

...the distance between classes in the emerging polity must be kept from widening to the point at which national growth would be crippled and unnecessary revolutions precipitated...

...Yet the desire for politico-economic union and the more rational use of human and natural resources first projected in the GhanaGuineaMali accord is widely suspected in the West...

...Nor must we exaggerate, or misinterpret their "corruption" as against our purity...

...It is most unlikely that Ghana alone, with its arbitrary, colonially defined boundaries, can become, even with the shrewdest political planning and use of resources, a viable modern polity...

...A modest acquaint...

...It was chronically evident in their employment of strangers as slaves, and in their pride of Empire, but it reached its climax in that terrible dialogue between Athens and Melos recorded, or invented, by Thucydides...

...Aside from its widespread activities directly or through subsidiaries in wholesaling and retailing, UAC has interests in sawmilling and plywood manufacture, bulking plants for palm oil and other export processing activities, breweries and fruit juice plants, cold storage, engineering and shipping...

...Properly to understand events in ex-colonial areas, such as Ghana, demands recognition of the unfinished revolution against this heritage, and the no less difficult attempt to replace it with an independent and viable structure...

...Millions of people, radically disengaged from their own traditions, are being rapidly proletarianized in both rural and urban areas, and are being forced to substitute a mere strategy of poverty and survival for authentic cultural expression...

...In the British areas, in particular, independence is being achieved, not through the fancied evolution of the usual instruments of indirect rule, but by their obliteration and replacement...

...Moreover, especially among the Ashanti, the dominant native State of the old Gold Coast, the Centre has been faced, on the one hand, with Chiefly groups whose interests had been cultivated, while their traditions had been transformed, by the British as a means of political and economic control...

...indeed, there is good reason to believe that cocoa was a major factor in keeping the British on the Gold Coast, after the abolition of slavery and the evident limitations of gold, rubber, and palm oil...

...This will demand enormous poise and intelligence from an informed leadership, along with the wisest possible planning and economic and technical aid without prejudice from the richer nations...

...We neglect such understanding at our peril...

...Typically, motor roads branch out from railroads in pursuit of the major export crops, and serve also as channels for the distribution of European imports...

...These embryonic structures appear at the very time that political and economic factors are literally forcing new boundaries into existence...

...shares and a full ownership of the United Africa Company, Ltd...

...Representative of this group are the United Africa Company of Nigeria, Ltd...

...ocassionally it is subtle...

...Furthermore, centralization and decentralization cannot, in such a context, be conceived as abstract, inflexible principles, but as strategies associated with specific ends, namely, political freedom and economic survival...

...They turn abstract principles, which are always doubleedged, to the analysis of the "emerging" peoples...

...In any event, corruption in all modern bureaucracies is universal and multiform...

...it is also, despite itself, a structured part of a movement toward freedom, and should not serve as an excuse for us to belittle the efforts of emerging nations...

...Having been squeezed out of trade, as it were, Africans have concentrated on retail and petty trade...

...In 1955-56 the UAC group in Nigeria alone sold merchandise (mostly imported) to a value of 62,030,000 pounds (at selling prices) and purchased raw material for export totaling 595,000 tons, valued at 27,654,000 pounds...

...Even where foreign aid seems fairly extensive, it is quickly blotted up in showcase projects or by bureaucratic waste, and the "takeoff into sustained growth" cannot be achieved...

...Nigeria), Ltd...

...Lupine journalists, catching the scent of our malaise, and pets of the liberal-conservative establishment, from Time to The Reporter, are remarkably quick to condemn what they do not understand...

...Under Nkrumah's leadership, the attempt is being made to lay the basis for a popular democracy, to shift from specialized, primary agricultural production to a more balanced industrial-agricultural economy, which would include the growing and processing of food crops for consumption at home...

...Moreover, to evaluate by standards of behavior that we ourselves hardly ever achieve, as in the instance of our "disappointment" with India over Goa, is a species of what may be called moral colonialism, a curious piece of psycho-political business which gives us the chance to evade our own history by adopting fantastic expectations of carefully chosen others...

...and, it might be added, Africa has her own ancient sense, and systems, of communal ownership...

...It is just such considerations that lead sociological economists of Gunnar Myrdal's persuasion to counsel an enlightened self-protection as one essential policy of the emergent nations...

...At the end of 1899, its charter was revoked by the United Kingdom, but apart from capital compensation it was allowed to retain the right of one-half share in Government royalties from mining...

...That is, underbidding for raw materials, high tariffs, and preferential planning, pricing and support of commodities produced in Western Europe can drive the ex-colonies into an even more subservient because less protected and more competitive position than was the case during the heyday of frank colonialism...

...This paradox is one that both we and the new revolutionary nationalisms must face, for reasons that will become evident below...

...Within Ghana, such a movement implies a strong and flexible central government which can weigh provincial needs in the interests of the people as a whole...

...In Europe there are the European Economic Community, the European Free Trade Association, Benelux, the European Coal and Steel Community, etc...

...There is, of course, a contradiction between the many states arising in the wake of colonialism and the larger trend toward the limitation of national sovereignty...

...In short, the whole shifting socio-economic structure, including the degree and type of urbanization which is developing in most underdeveloped areas, is a function, direct or indirect, of prior colonial occupation...

...Nkrumah, that is the Government and Party which he represents, is confronted at home with a single crop economy (technically a luxury crop), geared to the interests of the prior colonial power...

...First, it is no longer profitable...

...The principle of radical decentralization, which many social democrats in industrialized countries understandably support, simply does not apply to ex-colonial territories, where the people at large must grope towards union across a great many artificially erected, and a few authentic, barriers, while attempting the most difficult feats of national development...

...Global organizations and regional blocs not merely of a military, but of a political, economic, and social character, have multiplied since the Second World War, not so much out of sentiment as out of need...

...all others were Africans...

...The Insfance of Ghana It would be, for example, politically disastrous and analytically naive to interpret Nkrumah's behavior in Ghana as solely motivated by a desire for personal power or as pro-Soviet in a cultural or political sense...

...The so-called opportunism of these leaders, in search of a united people and effective political agencies, opportunism which European politicians are so eager to emphasize, undoubtedly exists...

...considerable local economic and cultural autonomy were maintained under the surface of external rule, and there was far more sense and continuity, even of participation, in the changes that did occur...

...Moreover, connections between colonies of the same metropolitan power were almost equally undeveloped, since isolation of a dependent territory has the effect of securing political control...

...indeed, the minimal cost of maintaining a modern colony in accord with what has wrongly been called the "revolution of rising expectations" (actually, at this stage, a revolution for sheer survival), makes formal independence a cheaper alternative for the metropole...

...To one degree or another the same thing holds for every socalled independent nation in Africa, indeed for nation states everywhere...

...The idea of a non-colonialist Commonwealth would have proven unrealistic...

...Cie Francaise de L'Afrique Occidentale...

...Summing up my second premise, then: Colonialism is dead, but its heritage remains...

...In these cases, one rarely hears a reference to the ulterior motives of a Monnet or Spaak...

...Put another way, they are being rapidly converted into marginal producers and marginal consumers on the remotest fringes of contemporary industrial society...

...Colonialism alone was merely a phase in this process, the origins of which must be looked for in, among other factors, the global dynamics of the mercantilist and later the industrial market...

...Second, colonialism is no longer prestigious for the metropolitan countries...

...transport, 5,380...

...the large foreign-financed companies started principally as trading concerns but have increasingly diversified their operations to include processing of primary produce and a wide variety of industrial activities...

...Buying cheap and selling dear is, after all, if not the expressed intention of the Common Market, at least its likely effect, vis-a-vis the rest of the world...

...Moreover, the best way to develop techniques is not to delay their introduction but to sharpen them on concrete projects...

...1,221...

...For the shattering of subsistence or near-subsistence economies, as a heritage of colonial or quasi-colonial penetration everywhere in the underdeveloped areas, means the destruction of the relative cultural autonomy, style, and vigor previously associated with these societies...

...Accordingly, Myrdal and others, including the authors of a basic United Nations report on economic development in underdeveloped areas, point out that the richer nations of the West are accumulating capital at a rate so far in advance of the underdeveloped areas that an international class system, comprising all nations, has already come into being...

...and Societe Commerciale de l'Ouest Africain...

...it can be considered a civil transformation of the customary practice of gift-giving...

...In Nigeria, the local company is called the United Africa Company of Nigeria, Ltd...

...We must be prepared to understand the context in which either course is pursued...

...The rest is epitaph...

...Goldie, a keen diplomat, businessman, and empire builder described not incorrectly as the founder of Nigeria, proceeded to enlarge the company by amalgamation with competing French trading companies and 2 years later the company's name was changed to National African Company...

...central planning will constantly have to aim at breaking the rigidities, which are the mark of under-development, and to seek to establish greater flexibility in the entire economic and social fabric...

...Although the United Africa Company group trades throughout West Africa, it does most of its business in Nigeria and Ghana...

...That, I submit, is the key to both domestic and foreign Ghanian policy...

...But the disparity between richer and poorer classes and areas within underdeveloped nations, who cannot afford such measures and are ill-equipped to implement them, grows cumulatively through a spiraling process similar to the one widening the social and economic distance between groups of nations...

...Given continued dependence on cocoa, Ghana is bound to get poorer, not richer, as time goes on, and the possibilities of self-determination must also diminish...

...It is still necessary, as both symbol and fact, for a telephone call from Lagos to be routed through London on its way to Accra...

...motors (service, etc...

...These big European companies are the machinery with which imperial Britain exploits Nigeria...

...It also owns 36,550 acres of plantation estates, of which 20,250 are in Nigeria (around Sapele and Calabar) and 16,200 in the British Cameroons...

...The internal purpose of these governments, moreover, must be to develop balanced economies...

...They simply lacked the complicated ideological, technological, social, and economic means, not to mention the refined psychological techniques, which are at hand today and are incorporated into all modern political structures...

...Moreover, these explosive events are occurring in a world society in a century that has developed new sources of energy along with alternative technical and social means of organizing industry and agriculture...

...separate local companies have been set up to handle its operations in the respective countries...

...Who would dare measure us against them—and where is the evidence...

...even the most far-flung empires prior to modern times were essentially tributary...

...what is acceptable in one tradition may be intolerable in another that succeeds it...

...political independence revealed the fragmentation that had taken place under the pseudo-unity of Empire...

...Indeed, several of the lower class nations are not only relatively, but absolutely, poorer in terms of real per capita income than they were before the Second World War...

...We should view developments in Ghana as telescoping aspects of our own Revolution and Civil War...

...As an indication of its importance in the economic development of Nigeria, statistics issued by the company show that between 1936-37 and 1951-52 capital expenditures of 15,781,000 pounds were undertaken in all 4 British West African areas, of which two-thirds, or 10,011,000 pounds, was expended within Nigeria...

...Several of these companies have a century or more of trading experience in West Africa behind them and in this period through successive mergers and amalgamations have attained a far-flung and diverse establishment reaching, insofar as trading activities are concerned, into every section and virtually every village in the country...

...Italics added.] Upon receiving the charter, the company took the name of Royal Niger Company...

...acquisition in the early thirties of the outstanding African and Eastern Trade Corp...

...It is the projective fear of our own totalitarian tendency, emerging out of the whole structure of the modern industrial state, that makes us so sensitive to "centralizing" trends in the ex-colonial areas...

...It certainly need not blind us to the legitimate historical roles that these leaders have assumed...

...The idea of the absolutistic, pre-industrial state is a modern political myth, a sort of historical projection of present fears into the past...

...Still, let us bear in mind that European economic union, especially with the involvement of Great Britain, can easily serve a neocolonialist function...

...On the contrary, the "oppressor" state is usually weak in its own hinterland, substantially unconcerned with welfare measures, economically feeble and incapable of conceiving or effectuating large-scale socio-economic reorganization...

...For example, the Ashanti-dominated Opposition in Ghana agitated against the Volta River scheme which will destroy the sovereignty of cocoa and help unite the country in economic and social units that cut across present ethnic boundaries, although divisions are bound to appear in the new national class and occupational structure...

...Most of this was purchased on behalf of the Government marketing boards, the UAC acting as the boards' agent...

...But in many developing nations, wherein the impersonal principles of statehood have not yet crystalized, nepotism seems natural and even bribery has emotional, kin-saturated overtones...

...Moreover, "No society has ever substantially reformed itself by a movement from above or by a simple voluntary decision of an upper class...

...It would also be naive and disastrous to misconstrue Ghana's PanWest African or even Pan-African policy as merely one man's or one party's ambition in a regional or continental struggle for power...

...but in these areas the base of state and nation is weak and amorphous, and a polity first of all must be created to transcend the makeshift colonial structure...

...The traditional "oppressor" state (Myrdal believes that all pre-industrial states are "oppressive" and I am inclined to agree with him) should not, I think, be confused with a strong and flexible state apparatus...

...It is this ancient sense of community which Nkrumah and others seek to rescue, and transform into contemporary cultural forms, while maintaining the spirit of the past...

...The Volta undertaking is the basis for a new economy, and this must be begun at once, even at some sacrifice of more specialized internal interests, and of what may seem to be quicker, more tangible profits...

...In 1929, the two companies joined forces, and a new company was launched—the United Africa Company, Ltd., with a capital of 13 million pounds...

...It is here that the dilemma of African socialism becomes evident...

...Both enforced isolation and overprotection have on the political level results analogous to psychodynamic processes...

...The era of so-called unlimited national sovereignty is rapidly coming to a close...

...indeed, the analogy holds for almost any African or underdeveloped area...

...But this is not to deny that classic colonialism has left a massive heritage in the form of weakly industrialized or completely agrarian economies shaped to the needs of the mother country...

...Moreover, the ruling elites and supportive bureaucracies of the former colonies have been trained for the most part either in the cultural expectations, intellectual attitudes, and psychological set of the dominant power, or are reared in such symbiosis with that power that freedom only reveals the rootlessness of the elite structure...

...It is worth quoting at length: Mining, foreign trade, shipping, wholesaling, industry, and banking are dominated by the large expatriate companies, and, outside of the purely agricultural production field, local African capital is significantly represented in only a few scattered activities...

...That is, past "despotisms" were less capable of cultural regimentation than any contemporary state, totalitarian or otherwise...

...Detailed evidence for this is available in a recent 1957 U.S...

...Rational and historical connections between colonial areas associated with the various nation states of Europe were not only ignored but actively discouraged...

...Of the total, some 30,000 acres are planted principally to rubber, bananas, and oil palm...

...In the end the Melians are, as a matter of policy, exterminated and enslaved, having been denied the right to stay neutral in the war against the Lacedaemonians, and having refused the honor of becoming an Athenian colony...

...Thus, one may conclude that the surprising thing is not that there has been so little tolerance in Ghana for an opposition that sought to fragment the country before the revolution had gotten off the ground, but rather so much tolerance when compared with similar situations elsewhere...

...it may be the only way that they can protect themselves and accumulate sufficient capital to break out of the endless circle of primary production into more balanced industrial-agricultural structures...

...In Myrdal's words, "In many of the poorer countries the natural drift towards inequalities has been supported and magnified by built-in feudal and other inegalitarian institutions and power structures which aid the rich in exploiting the poor...

...Myrdal's critical point is that free trade will only increase the wealth of the community of richer nations, although I should note that capital has migrated, and will continue to migrate, from one area among them to another...

...This is not to deny the danger inherent in the bureaucratic entrenchment of new, revolutionary elites, particularly in the underdeveloped areas, where very striking gaps between the few and the many are easily opened...

...It is only in such a context that we can properly understand the complaint of Nkrumah and others concerning the postcolonial "balkanization" of the continent...

...For us, the colonial contradiction began with the Greeks, generated in the disparity between their view of Man and their uses of men...

...The British soap firm, Lever Bros., purchased the assets of the Royal Niger Company in 1920 for 8,500,000 pounds and made one unsuccessful attempt at that time to purchase the shares of the African and Eastern Trade Corp., Ltd., as well...

...In some cases, indeed, a flight of capital from the now unprotected ex-colonial areas is under way as a predictable result of the "free play" of the market forces...

...The United Africa group, as of December 1956, employed 43,228 persons in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Gambia...

...Italics added.] This situation has prompted some Africans to complain against foreign-financed companies on grounds of economic domination, "monopoly position," and limitation on opportunities open to Nigerians...

...It is Myrdal's hardly debatable contention that classic equilibrium theory, most evident in economics with its free trade and laissez faire components, but ramifying throughout the social sciences, has led to a false and dangerous expectation concerning the self-adjusting and harmonious relationship of the "have" and "have not" nations...

...It survives because it is either not directly challenged, that is, accepts, under native conditions, a high degree of local autonomy in exchange for tribute, or because it is supported by colonial or foreign authorities...

...And the leaders, although men of what may broadly be called "Western education," learned lessons and suffered experiences that their teachers did not perhaps intend...

...The governments of the new nations may alternate in their policies in this matter, and may even adopt centralization in one sector and decentralization in another...

...This is a development on a scale unprecedented in history...

...Department of Commerce survey on investment in Nigeria...

...Italics added.] By 1879, four British trading companies had established themselves in trade along the lower Niger as far up as Onitsha...

...With the formation of the Lever Bros.—Unilever consortium in 1937, the United Africa Company, Ltd., continued as a direct subsidiary of Lever Bros...

...Moreover, the richer nations themselves strive increasingly toward integration, that is, the bringing up of relatively depressed areas within their borders to the national level by means of typical, and costly, welfare state measures...

...C. & 0.) also have long association with Nigeria and are well established throughout the principal towns...

...Colonialism in its classic form is dead, but the spirit lingers on in the policies and presuppositions of the ex-colonial powers, and infects, also, the American consciousness...

...The situation is, of course, very complicated...

...Thus, the attitude of the Opposition to the Volta River project—that it be delayed until the country was better prepared, is only superficially plausible...

...In the ensuing competition, both companies, as one writer put it, "almost competed themselves broke...

...Thus active, planned interference with these forces by sophisticated, welfare oriented, and politically sturdy governments is the sine qua non of future development in the underdeveloped areas...

...On the other hand, the Central Government is confronted by the more prosperous cocoa growers, often in fact identified with the chiefs, who desire the continued expansion and protection of the cocoa economy and thereby pursue political and economic autonomy to a degree and in a manner that would threaten the integrity and growth of the nation at large...

...But free trade will increasingly impoverish the poor...

...indeed it is the force that drives them into mere abstraction...

...But to return to the demise of classic colonialism: there are at least three reasons why it is no longer viable...

...Among the latter is the old Gold Coast, middle class business and professional elite formed at a time and under circumstances that made solidarity with the mass of people almost impossible...

...That act of Athens epitomizes the self-betrayal of classic Greek civilization...

...As for ourselves, let us not forget that colonialism has been the old, persistent contradiction that unfolded at the heart of the West and remains, in its accumulated ramifications, unresolved...

...In that year, through the efforts of Sir George Goldie, these companies were amalgamated to form the United African Company...

...ance with history confirms that these abstractions starve the spirit...

...John Hold & Co...

...This looming cultural poverty is complementary to the cultural deficiency of our phase of industrial civilization...

...Ghana, then, has been undergoing a revolution against both colonialism and its after-effects, including the pseudotraditionalism of the Chiefly groups...

...With an issued capital of 6 million pounds, compared with the Royal Niger Company's capital of 10 million pounds, the syndicate was sufficiently big to seriously threaten the Royal Niger Company...

...Paterson, Zochonis & Co., Ltd...

...An Unfinished Revolution So long as this revolution remains unfinished, as Julius Nyerere has pointed out, it can hardly tolerate an opposition which would subordinate the interests of the people at large to those of traditionally or newly privileged groups...

...International Inequality My final premise is implicit in the socio-economic analyses of Gunnar Myrdal, Ragnar Nurkse, and like-minded Scandinavian scholars...

...Too often, even radical Americans, innocent of specific knowledge of events in the ex-colonial territories, think in cliches, and join the chorus of disapproval...

...Of the total number in Nigeria, 695 were Europeans in technical or nontechnical management jobs...

...But what these people need, and deserve, from us are humane insight, fraternal sympathy, and concrete historical perceptions...

...But the fact is that the new nations of Africa enjoy little or no communication among themselves...

...The exceptions here are, of course, those leaders who ignited the independence movements by reaching the people through agencies that lay beyond the control of colonial rule...

...civilizations die of them...

...and we, then, become justified in their failure...

...At the turn of the century it had achieved a virtual commercial monopoly in the lower Niger Basin, but in 1919, a new syndicate of several competitors had emerged—the African and Eastern Trade Corp., Ltd...

...Another factor affecting the development of the ex-colonial areas is an unbalanced transportation and communications grid, developed in the economic and military interests of the mother country...

...they choke off growth and make the subject more dependent...

...of this total, 25,234 were employed in Nigeria in the following fields: Trading, 15,442...

...and Unilever Ltd., of England...

...One reason for this internal dynamic of the lower class nations is clear enough: In large parts of the underdeveloped world, archaic, "oppressor," pre-industrial state structures, to use Myrdal's terms, are absorbing the wealth that is being produced and using it to buttress the ruling regime and to benefit its members...