An Economic View of Negro African Independence
Friedenberg, Daniel
One of the most significant political events of the 1950s was the movement of the African states, and in particular the Negro peoples of sub-Sahara Africa, toward independence. As the previous...
...Professor Herskovits has shown that three of these culture areas, those of the Western Sudan, the Congo area and the Guinea coast, were admirably evolved before the European intrusion...
...In the period from 1879 to 1900 the French acquired their vast empire south of the Sahara...
...For, all economic studies notwithstanding, General de Gaulle would never dare to leave the initiative of accepting or rejecting total independence in the hands of a populace where a single white vote is only equal to a single black vote, were it not for the overriding fact that there are almost no colons or white settlers in French West and Equatorial Africa...
...and going further, stated that any member of the French Community (except Algeria) could vote to leave even subsequent to the referendum...
...24% of manganese ore...
...It is an interesting and extremely relevant fact that the three areas in Africa which had evolved their own high culture, though sundered by the invader into an absurd patchwork of national interests, are the very ones springing to leadership today...
...gence of Africa...
...By 1870, the pattern of modern Europe was reaching crystallization, with each nation concentrating on its own national development...
...Although Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sekou Toure of Guinea are talented and noted figures, the individual personality of Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and the new leadership of Nigeria will be the determining factors in the evolution of the Guinea coast...
...In a desperate gamble, de Gaulle thought that the advantages of French subsidy inside the franc bloc would keep the African colonies within the Community...
...The British are faced with the same dilemma in Kenya and the Rhodesias...
...But Algeria has close to I million French settlers (Europeans are all classed as "French") in a total population of some I0 million persons, while there are only 150,000 whites among the 30 million natives of all French Africa south of the Sahara...
...Cottonseed and sisal...
...Liberia, Guinea and Ghana already self-governing...
...And even the crushed Congolese are now asserting independence...
...There is every indication that the Mali Federation, which was originally supported by Dahomey and the Voltaic Republic until Houphouet-Boigny began to pull strings backstage, will act as a centripetal force on all the states of the Sudan area...
...Alongside this extraordinary development, a new shift was directed toward the expansion of the market rather than continued emphasis on cheaper materials and labor...
...for Lever Bros., Ltd...
...A Pandora's Box of possibilities lies ahead for Africa as it enters the modern world...
...They have applied with enormous success the trick of combining economic dependence and political independence...
...The surest way to protect such capital was extension of the local police or army to the newly acquired area, and the natural result was territorial expansion into Africa (as well as Oceania, the unappropriated parts of Asia, etc...
...What then has happened...
...Putting aside a history of the bickering, the party interests and personal ambitions involved, inevitable to a time of change, certain hypotheses may be tentatively suggested: A. The Western Sudan, the spiritual heir to the Songhai and Mali empires, has leaders with more brains than economic resources at their disposal...
...which has the potential to develop in rapid fashion from a commercial to a modern industrial economy...
...And the Union of South Africa, whose situation is apocalyptic, remains a threat to civilized society in the foreseeable future...
...one simply turned away and tried to forget certain areas existed...
...The people of the Guinea coast, whose natural democracy and agricultural talent have been noted from earliest times, appear to have an attractive future...
...La gloire remained intact if slightly tarnished, but the franc was still entrenched...
...11% of diamonds...
...Nigeria, the Sudan, the British Cameroons, Sierra Leone and Tanganyika are all magnificent tributes to this policy which, in sum, consists of eliminating subsidy and retaining the market...
...14% of cocoa...
...11% of copper ore...
...But the home markets of these individual states were too small to satisfy the growing pressure of excess capital...
...the Western Sudan, lying between the Guinea coast and the Arabized Sahara to the north...
...It was widely known in France that the growth of her internal economy had been crippled by overseas obligations, while the countries shorn of colonies by war or revolt had moved far ahead...
...The Underlying Economic Meaning The entry of the white conqueror into Africa may be reviewed strictly as economic rather than political or moral history...
...but disaster may occur because of Belgian stupidity...
...66% of diamonds...
...This was the new pattern of colonialism determined by England...
...vanadium and cobalt ores...
...American moneyed interests have never needed political domination to achieve their aims...
...The potential of the Congo is unlimited...
...SUMMING UP, it can be said that the Guinea coast, centered around the emergent state of Nigeria, and the Congo, which may form a centripetal focus for Angola, Nyasaland and northern Rhodesia, will be the future centers of Negro African power...
...Without doubt, the future of Negro Africa lies in the unrolling of these three major culture areas...
...and the Eastern Sudan, a buffer and transitional culture to the north of French Equatorial Africa...
...One of the most significant political events of the 1950s was the movement of the African states, and in particular the Negro peoples of sub-Sahara Africa, toward independence...
...The areas of low cultural level throughout Negro Africa will probably remain in a torpid condition for a longer period...
...Every economic statistic relevant for French Negro Africa is equally relevant for Algeria where, to add to the woes of France, the revolt costs an additional billion dollars a year...
...Are the European nations suddenly becoming benevolent, are they deliberately yielding power out of fatigue...
...citrus fruits...
...The Western Sudan, as politically dynamic as the Guinea coast, is at present dominated by the Mali Federation which has only recently been promised full freedom by de Gaulle...
...Modern heavy industry is so rationalized that the break-even point of cost is now down to 60 percent or 70 percent of capacity...
...According to Melville J. Herskovits, who has made a detailed study I96 of this region, sub-Sahara Africa can be divided into distinct cultural areas: the Khoisan, the Click linguistic group of the Bushmen and Hottentots in South Africa...
...POLITICAL ECONOMIC POPULATION BY TYPE* Country SUDAN NIGERIA GHANA UGANDA TANGANYIKA FRENCH WEST AFRICAt BELGIAN CONGO FRENCH EQUATORIAL AFRICA KENYA PORT...
...the pro-French hallucines who dream of a Latin Africa...
...If men of the stature of Senghor and d'Arboussier appeared in the Congo, the history of Africa would be writ large in the near future...
...The British, as a consequence, have met with remarkably little disorder in the evolution of their 100 per cent Negro colonies in Africa...
...But by one of the ironies of history, the enormous territories of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa were found devoid of natural resources...
...Black ivory" when worked in the mines and plantations produced valued food products such as sugar and tobacco, or minerals of small bulk and high worth, such as silver and gold...
...The wretched education granted to these colonies by the occupying powers will now appear as an asset, since the thin veneer of Europe-oriented, individuals may soon be absorbed in a common reversion to the Kwa dialect of the Niger Congo language...
...A world transformation is now beginning whose ripples, contrary to the image of a stone thrown in water, are seen best at the outer shores of impact...
...24% of platinum ore...
...The flood tide of freedom in Negro Africa is singularly different from the liberation of the Asian states...
...vanadium ore a n d asbestos...
...It is then seen as a thread in the larger cloth of European economic expansion...
...This implies (where production is not devoted to war) a higher consumer standard of living, since the workers, whose productivity is raised by the good living conditions and education necessary to operate modern machinery, are the only available expanding market once the middle class is sated...
...The Guinea coast, with its dense population, had a specialization in crafts and arts unequalled in sub-Sahara Africa, with a guild system that preceded the white man...
...Little Holland could not hope to defeat in direct warfare the natives of the thousand-mile archipelago of Indonesia...
...26% of chrome ore...
...The possibility of a civil revolt against the Belgians is not all unlikely if Belgium does not keep its word on the promise of independence...
...Two general conclusions stand out from this mass of statistics that can be summed up in a simple formula: The degree of independence is in inverse ratio to the white population and/or favorable trade balance.* Wherever the European population is of some size and works with rich resources (Union of South Africa, the Rhodesias) , a white authoritarian government—the more polite name for color fascism—exists...
...THE TREMENDOUS TECHNOLOGICAL revolution centering around World War II brought forth a new and momentous stage...
...Pattern of African Independence It is a law of crystallography that shattered crystals retain their lines of crystallization...
...There is every indication that Africa south of the Sahara is beginning to enter a similar epoch...
...or forced labor (either one's own people or others) . The prospects of enslaving Negroes for forced labor, rather than depressing the local populace with all the political implications involved, was what made the African slave trade so entrancing to the European powers...
...Where the white population is equally small but less profitably employed (Kenya), indications are that former repressions are giving way to a more sane policy...
...This is the cycle of the second stage of the industrial revolution...
...Indochina and Indonesia came to statehood by revolt against the European masters...
...193...
...British East' Africa (excepting the Kikuyu of Kenya) , the Portuguese possessions, French Equatorial Africa (excepting Gaboon) , the Eastern Sudan and Sudan proper, lack the material resources and cultural heritage to create national states in the modern sense...
...And most important is Nigeria, where the tremendous population,* dwarfing the entire rest of the Guinea coast put together, matches its bulk and mercantile skills with sizable resources...
...A high return is received, of which a stipulated percentage goes back to the nation involved...
...An analysis of the nature of these new nations adds to the bewilderment...
...What was left of the myth fell apart in Indochina, where Senegalese troops saw at first hand the new reality...
...Cottonseed and sisal...
...The states of Senegal and the Soudan, under the impetus of Leopold Sedar Senghor, fused into the Mali Federation...
...The first, which may roughly be defined as 1500-1870, was the period when all efforts were concentrated on obtaining capital during the initial stages of industrialism...
...We must learn that other systems do not automatically mean dictatorship...
...Its worst liability is a split between former English and French colonies, a problem not merely linguistic but also monetary...
...The desire of individual leaders to have consular and United Nations representation, more than the petty Machiavellian efforts of France, may prevent Mali from swallowing all the Western Sudan...
...As a reaction against this radical group, Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast organized the Entente Sahel-Benin, consisting of the Ivory Coast, Niger, Dahomey and the Voltaic Republic...
...The myth of France cracked under the blitzkrieg and its reverberation sounded in the most backward villages of Negro Africa...
...MOZAMBIQUE PORT...
...cocoa...
...In Kenya today, for example, England is supporting a less than 1 percent minority of aristocratic expatriates on feudal estates at the expense of the Exchequer...
...Mighty France was a shell and the shell itself was so riven by internal dissension that the empire was crumbling with each passing day: it seemed an irrevocable torrent to the young intellectuals of black Africa, the handful of students who went to study at Paris and heard the voices of the wave of the future from their white comrades at the -Cite Universitaire...
...Though many of these areas will soon have the paraphernalia of political independence, in the form of Liberia or Ethiopia, they will be of little import in the coming ewer...
...But without exception the new states of black Africa have achieved their independence while maintaining a degree of relative harmony with the former colonial powers...
...The experience of India, whereby that country was saved for the sterling bloc through the mystical formula of "independence and free association," had not been lost to the Whitehall conservatives...
...Furthermore, the newer industrial processes demanded educated labor, not merely well fed, well clothed and well housed, but of a degree of understanding capable of operating and repairing very complex machines...
...As an example, tractors can sow and reap grain more cheaply in the high labor markets of the United States and Canada than can peon labor on the Argentine pampas...
...15 0-%o of chrome ore...
...The consequence is that men such as Nkrumah, Toure and Senghor, a Europeanized and educated elite, are non-existent here...
...Is it possible they have finally accepted the position of Thucydides, suggested over two thousand years ago, that a democracy by its very nature cannot be imperialist...
...Nigeria and its confederate Guinea coast states to the west should emerge as a commerical economy, with fishing, agriculture, shipping and the exploitation of hydro-electric power to smelt its aluminum and manganese ores...
...Jealous of Toure, the heads of the Mali Federation presented an ultimatum to France: either the French Community would evolve into a Commonwealth, with each state having its own independence and representation at the United Nations, or Mali would leave the Community...
...Setting date of independence...
...21% of manganese ore...
...The Congo should develop into an enormously important industrial economy, the focus of attraction and emulation for the surrounding regions...
...Most of these backward territories had not even arrived at a historical level where national feeling was a deep impulse...
...In the Congo area, a well-developed commercial order, with money and trade, blossomed into complex federations and kingdoms...
...Subtle, profoundly European in education and taste, these leaders are a credit to their people...
...To touch beneath the skin of events, it is imperative to relate political to economic movements...
...At most, several, such as Guinea, may take a neutralist position under extreme aggravation...
...In the most advanced form, as in Venezuela, the United States companies invest money in ventures that purely domestic capital cannot exploit...
...In a matter as important as education, for example, only one per cent of the tiny French Equatorial African budget went to all sources of education lumped together, while in French West Africa there were only 36 secondary schools for 17 million persons...
...The concern of the capitalist (whether individual, state-controlled or the state itself) therefore was only secondarily with his material and labor costs, but primarily his market potential...
...10% of sesame seed...
...A pattern can be discerned under this welter of problems...
...and the backward states such as Liberia and Ethiopia...
...But the incredible natural resources of the Congo and the skill of its trained native labor, the most advanced in all Africa, are unique...
...36% of cocoa...
...Economic figures courtesy Oxford Economic Atlas of the World, 1955...
...Up to World War II the difficulty was resovled by evasion...
...He was right for a brief period, since only Guinea under Sekou Toure opted for independence...
...This epoch, which might be defined as ending with World War II, was characterized by enormous investment outside of Europe...
...In the cases of the Western Sudan and the Guinea coast, political independence for a considerable period will cloak economic dependence on Europe and America...
...Cottonseed...
...Another important aspect was the history of Germany and Japan since World War II, and even more so that of Holland since the loss of Indonesia...
...A seemingly ludicrous situation then developed...
...Nigeria, Togo, Dahomey and Sierra Leone scheduled for independence: the entire Guinea littoral will be liberated within a few short years as though the reign of the white man was a dream...
...U.S.S.R...
...For the first time in history, it paid the holders of capital to invest in the human beings operating their property...
...Population figures courtesy Demographic Yearbook, 1956, United Nations and Inside Africa by John Gunther...
...Both Ghana and Guinea are "guided democracies" in the sense of Sukarno's Indonesia, while the Ivory Coast and Nigeria tend to be more traditionalistic...
...The religious tension between the conservative and feudal Moslem north and the progressive Christian south is a disturbing factor that better relations between Cairo and the West may offset...
...The white man, whose domination was so assured throughout sub-Africa ten years ago, may in another decade be a distant memory of oppression...
...Indeed, the Congo is the only state (putting aside the special problem of the Union of South Africa) • Excluding South Africa, out of 21 cities in sub-Sahara Africa having more than 100,000 inhabitants, 7 are in Nigeria...
...Putting aside all propaganda, this is the true inner meaning of the de-imperialist policy of the advanced European nations...
...But the African states were small, impotent and lacking in industrial equipment...
...France had slowly begun to learn American and British tactics...
...de Gaulle's capitulation was more apparent than real...
...asbestos...
...A major source of thorium and uranium ores...
...As to the form of government that will arise in these new countries, the most logical one is that of "guided democracy" as now used in Ghana and Guinea...
...can say more, and with greater authority, through a black than a white mouth on the Gold Coast...
...Movement to Political Independence The evolution in French policy is a most instructive case history...
...49% of gold ore...
...Belgium, which acts as a middleman for the Congo ores, is totally unnecessary to this evolved economy: the American interests, for example, who buy up the entire uranium ore supply, would be glad to provide working capital at almost any terms a native regime would ask rather than see it go to Russia...
...11% of beryllium ore...
...Why should we spend many millions of francs to subsidize colonial dependencies when on all political issues the ingrates side with our enemies?—this question was increasingly being asked by Frenchmen in responsible positions...
...ANGOLA NORTHERN RHODESIA SOUTHERN RHODESIA UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA % Negro 99.99 99.96 99.85 99.84 99.80 99.63 99.50 99.46 99.26 99.16 98.09 97.59 92.36 79.15 SITUATION Independent Independent in 1960 Independent Postponed only by internal factions...
...1948-1950 Averages...
...in the areas of very small white intrusion (Nigeria Ghana) or deficit financing (Sudan, French West and Equatorial Africa), independence has either been achieved or is around the corner...
...The consequence in Africa is apparent today, where this economic transformation calls for a logical necessity to shift from colonial or political control to economic control for marketing purposes...
...The leaders of the two groups were soon at odds, which was what the French wanted...
...The Belgian Congo, to the contrary, is so advanced economically that it is a question whether the native Congolese even need the economic dependency implied by the usual type of political freedom...
...Political and cultural units follow the same law, as can be seen in the present fight between Cairo and Bagdad for the Arab world...
...B. The Guinea coast has impressive advantages and disadvantages...
...It is significant, for example, that only last year President Tubman of Liberia deliberately torpedoed the "union now" concept of Ghana's Premier Nkrumah, stalling to wait for the more conservative influence of Nigeria to influence Guinea coast confederation...
...When talking of the new Constitution, the General offered independence to any colony which affirmed that position by referendum...
...France had finally learned the lesson of history...
...A study of the ethnic and economic resources of the various African territories south of the Sahara gives a clearer picture of what is evolving (p...
...The difference between the low cost of production and high sale price led to accumulations of capital which could then be reinvested in producer's goods...
...The policy is even carried to the rigorous absurdity, from a traditionalist colonial view, of trying to unite dissident local factions in Uganda so they can take over political independence...
...It should be our privilege and duty to welcome these newcomers into the fraternity of civilization, for the shrinking world has truly made us all brothers...
...Almost overnight, powerful political parties began to rise in the African territories: the Rassemblement Democratique Africain, harnessed by the moderate Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast with the radical wing whipped forward by the dynamic Sekou Toure of French Guinea...
...the Guinea coast, including the entire littoral following the West African coast from Nigeria to Sierra Leone...
...This falls into three approximate epochs...
...The more likely threat to the political dynamism of the new Negro states will be the entrenched conservative elements: the feudal Moslem emirs of the north...
...The Portuguese colonies are quiet...
...t French Guinea has already opted for independence...
...This first or preliminary stage had its end parallel with the defeat of French hopes to dominate Europe and the subsequent rise of Germany...
...This method of harnessing the energies of new lands is I99 the only viable substitute for totalitarian tyranny, either fascistic or Communistic, and its plastic shape can make many compromises without killing hopes for a more truly democratic future...
...On December 12, 1959 de Gaulle capitulated...
...An open explosion in India was only averted by the sympathetic reaction of the British Labor party to demands for freedom...
...The area had a rich past because it was the trade route lying between the Mediterranean world and tropical Africa...
...But the tide of history kept running...
...The prime aim is to keep the former colony in the monetary empire, the franc or the sterling bloc, and thus to perpetuate an investment and market climate...
...The Western Sudan had market centers such as Kano and Timbuctoo, noted by Europeans even in feudal times...
...The tribal background, religious conflicts, low level of education and incomplete use of known resources, make impossible parliamentary democracy in the American sense...
...Certainly the Belgians will not give up political control without absolute guarantees of continued economic control...
...Capital can only be secured through limited means: borrowing...
...France, sullen after two centuries of failure to dominate Europe, had turned to Africa as a reaction against defeat in the Franco-Prussian War...
...Since some kind of French (or American) subsidy will be provided, it will partially resemble Tunisia in its general orientation...
...and a fusion of all the older leftist groups into a new Parti du Regroupement Africain, Marxist and independence-oriented, with the firebrand Leopold Sedar Senghor at the helm...
...Even the die-hard French seem to be studying economic history and, slowly, most reluctantly, may save the remnants of empire despite their imperialists...
...Near color Fascism Color Fascism SITUATION 1% Indicated wherever over 10% of total world export fradel 31% of cottonseed...
...Contrary to common belief, local labor is usually paid the same or higher wages than it would receive in the home market, and the difference is then spent in the acquisition of other American goods...
...37% of sisal...
...Instead of putting revoIutionaries in jail, Britain aided them while mouths foamed in Paris and Brussels...
...every time revolt breaks out, the colonials hastily roll out the royal flag and call for home country troops...
...And the crescendo has not yet been reached in this unheaval which, historically considered, seems to kaleidoscope eons into mere months...
...As the French mots put it: "Marx dissolves a bit under the Equator...
...aluminum ore...
...Even against the real interest of the land of his ancestral origin, the colonial is the cause of that parlysis confronting intelligent English and French policy in certain regions of Africa today...
...These were the facts that explain how a man of the right likel General de Gaulle,though obsessed as he is with la gloire and la mission civilisatrice of France, could make a startling offer of freedom to the French colonies...
...thus the profit is assured not so much from reducing costs but rather a concentration on a market which will absorb capacity or 100 percent production...
...Decent conditions are necessary to train workers to operate modern machinery...
...Indeed, the well-known French writer Raymond Cartier went so far as to publish in Paris-Match three famous articles in 1956 advocating the abandonment of the African colonies as total losses...
...The whole basis of economic slavery was therefore rendered untenable, a fact more important than all the ethical and religious diatribes against human oppression...
...diamonds and gold...
...We have the frightening image of a state evolving with embryo political leaders not trained beyond tribal values...
...the traditional chiefs such as the Kabaka of Buganda...
...since the home government reflects a pre-industrial mentality, the wave of modernism has not yet touched these colonies...
...The colossal population of India made British toryism decline combat...
...74% of cobalt ore...
...The leaders of Mali immediately pledged that France I'90 could maintain military bases on their soil, that French would be the official language of the new state and that Mali would remain in the French monetary and customs union...
...Far more serious, an eventual war between the Congo and the Union of South Africa, a fierce race war with a helot uprising in the Union as part of the conflict, is within the range of near reality...
...11% of oil palm kernels...
...The concentration on heavy industry, whose production had been assured through investment during the previous period—concomitant with new energy forms developed—now meant that machines could mechanically produce cheaper than slave labor...
...C. The Congo is the big question mark of Africa, since it is the one area that has both a valuable cultural heritage and the basic economy necessary for a powerful state...
...And * There are two partial exceptions to this rule...
...497 of oil palm kernels...
...Increased sales beyond the break-even point are far more important to the profit ratio than a reduced material or labor cost in a static market...
...To take a typical example, a German company could export capital on a profit basis to an underprivileged area and receive a most cordial welcome, while the French subsidies for roads, harbors and hospitals were viewed as oppressive acts...
...the East Africa cattle area, stretching from the extreme south all the way along the east coast to the Sudan...
...And as the psychologic weariness caused by the loss of Syria, Lebanon, Indochina, Tunisia and Morocco, spread through France, a new school of what has aptly been called "anti-colonialism of the right" for the first time began to gather force...
...But the fly in the ointment is the European colonial, the white man who has settled in Africa and considers his color an automatic guarantee of elevation...
...10% of oil palm kernels...
...95% of colombium ore...
...At Saint-Louis in the Senegal, the General stated that the sovereign states of the French Com munity were linked "only by their own free will" and that Mali could accede to full sovereignity "not only with the accord but with the aid of France...
...Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, though he parades himself as the first modem Negro premier in Africa, in a most subtle way—unknown even to himself— is a British stooge...
...Cultural ties between the Guinea coast and Negro America ( their blood cousins) are close and, given a minimum of understanding in Washington, this area should take its place in world affairs as a confederated commercial union sympathetic to those concerned with human as well as economic values...
...and even that some dictatorships can be popular and progressive...
...The Problem of Racism If the economic considerations of the mother countries—with the possible exception of the Belgian Congo—alone carried import, all of Africa would be free in five years...
...The most dangerous aspect of the new Congo is that the Belgians, who encouraged economic skills, refused all political and humanistic training to the natives...
...The adverse trade balance of the principal French African colonies ran to many millions of francs per year, the difference being absorbed by the mother country...
...This pressure will push the moderate elements to seek a confederal or regional grouping rather than affiliate themselves with Mali...
...The new technique of colonialism, therefore, is to give political independence in the hope that it will better insure economic dependence, "this kind of thing euphemistically called having close cultural and economic ties" as Nehru sarcastically defined it...
...The close-knit culture and religion of the Arab states presented a forbidding face to new European adventures...
...Europeans vainly attempting to hold...
...The advent of World War II changed the entire African picture...
...The first step occurred on August 24th, 1958, at Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa...
...34% of peanuts...
...Unfettered by rigid cultural anachronisms, alert and happy by disposition, this area has all the rudiments of a flourishing commercial economy...
...The economic facts supported the anti-colonialists of the right...
...As the foremost capitalist nation, America developed a technique of economic infiltration which eliminated any need to control the political machinery in the European sense...
...The British have learned the political wisdom which consists of forfeiting prestige to secure cash...
...Houphouet-Boigny, very pro-French, represents the bourgeoisie of the rich Ivory Coast who are afraid to be submerged in a poor larger mass...
...There is little indication that trading will revert to this specific pattern, which means the Western Sudan does not seem to have a strong economic future...
...Conquering empires such as the Hausa, Songhai, Ghana, Mali and Fula exercised tremendous power at different periods...
...copper, tin, lead, zinc and silver ores...
...Contrary to the high hopes, it was soon evident that, in spite of the most ruthless exploitation, the cost of maintaining the colonies was higher than the benefits received...
...It was unthinkable that France would permit its imperial policy to be affected by considerations of the cash register...
...Terrified of the overwhelming alien Negro mass, hallucinated by myths of racial superiority, he stands as the principal obstacle not only to African evolution but also the regularization (i.e., the transforming of political dependencies to economic markets) of relations between the mother countries and their former colonies...
...Most important, there is little indication that any of these new African governments will be proto-Communist, if only for the simple reason they depend on European subsidy and Western markets...
...And the classical argument that "invisible returns"— money flowing back through private profit—compensated for this loss was refuted by careful studies...
...hard timber...
...A circle of mutual advantage is created as long as the nation involved accepts the economic bondage implied...
...It is Africanization, not Marxism, that the modern African wants...
...and these workers are the only enlarged market available in which to sell the goods produced...
...But what forced the issue was the international prestige accorded to Sekou Toure...
...Shortly after the Tory party came back to power in the postwar period, a new colonial policy was laid down, following a study of United States interests in Latin America...
...Where the white population is smaller but profitably engaged (Belgian Congo), bloody repression has been employed with considerable success though most recent events show a change in tactics...
...But choice means life and there is far more optimism in the new areas coming into self-rule than tired Europe today...
...Every time London attempts to ameliorate the worst excesses, the colonials vituperate the administration...
...Production had sated the limited possibilities of each of the internal markets among the more advanced states, and these nations began to look for markets beyond their frontiers...
...And the only impediment to the complete political independence of Africa lies in the infinitesimally small white minorities that infest certain regions...
...As the previous decade belonged to the liberation movements of Asia, so the same wave of nationalism swept forward to engulf what had been considered the most backward continent in the world...
...the Congo area, embracing the Belgian and French Congos as well as northern Angola and Rhodesia...
...Major source of uranium ores...
...stealing (conquest or tribute...
...23% of peanuts...
...THE BRITISH, with their more pragmatic approach to empire, saw the lesson of history earlier and with eyes wiser than the French...
...And the Arab states, in their chaotic campaigns for both freedom and the new freedom to oppress others, almost dragged the major powers into a new world war...
...excluded from many statistics...
...THE PULSATING ACTIVITY in Negro Africa was of course scrutinized by the same officials whose job it was to budget money in order to support these deficit colonies...
...12% of beryllium ore...
Vol. 7 • April 1960 • No. 2
