An Economic View of Negro African Independence

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 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. And the crescendo has not yet been reached in this unheaval which, historically considered, seems to kaleidoscope eons into mere months. The white man, whose domination was so assured throughout sub-Africa ten years ago, may in another decade be a distant memory of oppression.

The flood tide of freedom in Negro Africa is singularly different from the liberation of the Asian states. An open explosion in India was only averted by the sympathetic reaction of the British Labor party to demands for freedom. Indochina and Indonesia came to statehood by revolt against the European masters. 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. But without exception the new states of black Africa have achieved their independence while maintaining a degree of relati...