Wallace G. Mills Hist. 317 13 Nationalist movements

Nationalist and Independence Movements in British Colonies

- for a long time this topic tended to be approached in simplistic terms and categories. There were 2 dichotomies that were used:

1. Resistance and Collaboration

- this set of categories grew out of World War 2 in Europe. Even in Europe, it is simplistic because ‘collaboration’ and ‘collaborators’ came to be depicted in very stark and condemnatory ways. Yet the term obscures a great range of behaviors which a simplistic categorisation fails to take account of. At any rate, the term has very pejorative connotations. It is impossible to use these terms in a value-free way whether or not one uses the terms themselves (some people use the concepts without using the terms).

- in effect in Africa we are dealing with adaptive behaviours and I think we should try to avoid simplistic value judgments as much as possible. In fact most people are required to adapt to some degree or other and drawing invidious distinctions is often arbitrary and probably mistaken.

- religious separatism is a good example of this, as noted previously. Too many scholars have tended to label or portray the seceders and separatists as heroic resistors; as a result, by implication if not explicitly, they label those who did not separate and who stayed in the regular churches and missions as cowardly and weak—Uncle Toms if not collaborators. Yet in South Africa as we have noted this seems to be mostly mistaken; while there have been exceptions, separatists have mostly been apolitical and some have actively sought government ties (in that sense even been ‘collaborationist’) while the ANC and similar organisations have drawn an enormous amount of leadership and support from those who remained in the regular churches.

 - in short, I think we should avoid both the terms and the concepts as inappropriate.

2. Primary and Secondary Resistance

 - this was a further delineation of resistance. It was an attempt to distinguish not only initial resistance to European intrusion and conquest from subsequent resistance (‘rebellion’ as colonial governments usually labelled it) but also to indicate different orientation.

- as ‘resistors’, they were all admirable, although the primary resistors were quixotic figures and probably ‘doomed’; by the 1960s, the secondary resistors could be seen as fated to succeed (i.e., an after the fact case of inevitability).

- late in the 1960s, Terence Ranger, who had been one of those helping to build up this categorisation, decided that in fact there were many connections between the two and that the two categories were not watertight.

- for example, some cases of ‘primary resistance’ in fact involved very significant innovation. The rebellion in Rhodesia in 1896 involved a large amount of cooperation and coordination between the traditional enemies, the Ndebele and the Shona. He argued that a traditional religous sect was used to bring the two together.

- even more, the Maji-Maji rebellion against the Germans in German East Africa in 1905-06 involved this type of cooperation which transcended traditional outlooks and hostilities. Again, a religious cult in the area helped to bring the different ethnic groups together.

 - in spite of this minor revisionism, the distinction has continued to be used. As part of this, there has been acceptance of the idea that secondary resistance usually followed a pattern (‘a paradigm’ in social science jargon). Its development was seen as follows:

- this kind of argument or picture was put forward by Thomas Hodgkin in his 1956 book, Nationalism in Colonial Africa.

- Kwame Nkrumah and the development of the Gold Coast Convention People’s Party is seen as a prime example of this final stage.


- there are a number of problems with the dichotomies and categories.

- resistors. Often, these people had no options. For example, in Uganda, once the British in effect entered into an alliance with the Ganda (who thus became ‘collaborators’), the other kingdoms and peoples were automatically on the other side and were not given the deal that the Ganda were; they thus became ‘resistors’.

- however, later in the colonial period, the Ganda became ‘resistors’. By the terms of the Uganda Agreement, the Ganda had retained their political structure and a good deal of internal decision-making. When the Uganda Protectorate Government attempted to reduce and perhaps eliminate that autonomy, the Ganda resisted in the courts and won.

- also, many traditional authorities under indirect rule had been working with the colonial governments (i.e., collaborating). Yet, after 1945, many of these threw their support behind the independence movements (i.e., joined the ‘resistance’).

- the point of this is to warn against being too judgmental. These categories and concepts are simplistic and attrociously judgmental; for people who have never been faced with the dilemmas and problems of the colonial situation to be overly critical is, at the very least, supercilious and almost certainly hypocritical.

- it is necessary to recognise that people in the situation may quite sincerely and legitimately believe that alternative policies and approaches are better. The problem really is to avoid accepting the distinctions unconsciously; we tend to lionize the overt resistor, but the person who works within the system to change it and even to undermine it may in fact accomplish more or as much as the overt ‘resistor’.

- this is what I think happened with regard to religious leaders. So many scholars fell in love with the separatists that they ended up making many of the separatists into something that they were not. On the other hand, those who did not separate were kind of lumped into the opposite category of being Uncle Toms etc., something which many of them certainly were not.

- the distinction between primary and secondary resistance does have uses but one should again avoid being judgmental. The kind of actions and responses under primary resistance were pretty much suicide and were thus not really viable. Abandoning such approaches and searching for alternatives was not cowardice or Uncle Tomism.

- the pattern or paradigm of secondary resistance has some uses but should not be applied mechanically or uncritically. As I have indicated, I do not believe that the emergence of AICs led to overt political activity. In fact, it was in most cases a retreat from involvement in political activity.as I have argued in “The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism versus African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910.” Nor should the early phase of African nationalism be dismissed as ‘elitism’.


Kenya

- Kenya provides an especially rich example of the development and evolution of an independence movement; there it developed and evolved among the Kikuyu. Kenya was taken over by the British relatively late in the 19th C. Why did the movement begin so early and develop so quickly?

A The Intrusion of two immigrant communities—white settlers and Asian Indians.

- both communities tended to be direct or indirect effects of the railroad to Lake Victoria and Uganda. Although Indians had been associated with the ‘Arabs’ in the 19th C, the sizeable Indian population had resulted mainly from the labourers who had been brought in on contract to build the railroad just after the turn of the century. A great many stayed on.

- the British were concerned to get the railroad paying for itself as soon as possible and that meant trying to build up traffic quickly. What was needed was a rapid development of production of agricultural products for export and a rapid increase of consumers of import goods. Africans in Kenya lived in a subsistence economy and colonial officials immediately decided that turning them into producers for export markets quickly was not practical. The only way to do it was to bring in white settlers; this was practical because in the interior the elevations were sufficiently high that the climate was temperate enough to be attractive to whites. Land was offered cheaply or in the case of retiring military officers as part of their pensions. To open up this interior in what became known as ‘the white highlands’, the British started to build a capital at what was named Nairobi adjacent to where the Kikuyu lived. (See the map of Kenya)

- the Kikuyu were quickly and massively affected:

B Impact of World War 1

- the East Africa campaign was large. It was conducted overland from Nairobi. Large numbers of troops and massive amounts of supplies and equipment were landed at Mombasa (massive amount of labour to unload ships and transfer goods to railway cars), hauled on the railway to Nairobi, and then hauled overland into German East Africa to the British troops.

- although Africans were not used as combatants (the South Africans who participated insisted on that but the British did not recruit or use Africans in combat in World War 1 anyway), enormous numbers of Africans were required at all stages of the transportation from the coast to the troops carrying on the pursuit of the German forces. These supply lines got enormously long. Deaths from accidents and disease far outnumbered deaths from military action (very few because the Germans were mostly retreating and avoiding direct confrontations with forces which greatly outnumbered them. In this circumstance, African mortality rates were substantially higher than among the white troops.

- although high wages in the ports and on the railroad helped to attract some of the labour, colonial officials also used a good deal of pressure and even compulsion to get the labour. Africans were less willing to go south into German East Africa.

- more generally, those Africans who had been drawn into the modern money economy began to be affected by inflation and rising prices; although wages also rose, especially in the port and on the railroad, they tended to lag behind rising prices.

C Postwar economic and political factors

- the end of the war continued the massive upheavals to which Africans were exposed:

- as you can see from the chronological outline of organisations and developments below, several of these issues were prominent in Harry Thuku’s organisation of the Young Kikuyu Association.


Chronology of African Responses and Political Developments

Political Evolution

Constitutional Balancing and Power Sharing

- following World War 2, Britain was attempting to find constitutional approaches that might work in political situations where there were racial, ethnic and/or religious diversities; the normal parliamentary approach with common rolls for geographical constituencies with ‘first past the post’ electoral contests tended to sharpen conflicts. It tended to produce ‘winner take all’ outcomes and the possibility that majorities could dominate and suppress minorities. Electoral contests frequently came to pit parties that are based on the racial, ethnic or religious differences in battles for dominance and control; these too often resemble electoral wars that easily drift over into real wars.

- these constitutional approaches usually involve communal constituencies rather than common rolls which guarantee minorities representation in line with their numbers in the population. Alternately, if the groups are relatively separated geographically, it may be possible to use a federal system; the provinces allow the groups to have a good deal of autonomy in local affairs.

- communal constituencies certainly make the differences overt, but this is usually coupled with some provision for power sharing, either in a federal system with powers being distributed between provinces and federal state or in some power sharing within the government (such as guaranteeing so many cabinet seats to each group). The Central African Federation was an experiment like this; in Kenya too, the British were trying to work towards something like this.

- none of these worked. Africans regarded such schemes where there were white settlers as simply ploys to allow white minorities to have much more power than their numbers warranted. In any case, majority groups are not usually willing to share power. The ideology of ‘democracy’ is overwhelmingly that the majority should prevail.

- also, we often expect too much from constitutions by themselves. Constitutions are simply legal documents; unless there is a social contract (i.e., a very wide acceptance of the rules and guidelines embodied in the constitution), the constitution is unlikely to be observed.

Mau Mau

 - after the suppression of the KCA, some younger Kikuyu were increasingly frustrated and saw violence as the path to take. It appears that the actual number of people involved in the organisation was much smaller than the government thought—a few thousand at most. There were a lot more who sympathised with their objectives and who were in the beginning willing to assist by bringing supplies to the fighters in rural areas. Also, contrary to what the government believed, it does not appear that the older leaders of the KCA/KAU had any real control over those involved in the movement.

- as an underground movement, secrecy was essential to the organisation and Mau Mau turned to oathing rituals and ceremonies to ensure loyalty and security. These came to be one of the most notorious aspects of Mau Mau.

- oathing had been used in traditional Kikuyu legal practice. In cases where there was conflicting testimony and no way to ascertain which testimony was true, the witnesses would be required to take powerful oaths that opened them and their kin to very serious illness and punishments if they were lying.

- however, Mau Mau oathings went far beyond anything known in traditional society. The entire procedure was designed to overwhelm the candidates with the awful consequences should they ever break the oath. Also, any person who refused to take the oaths would be killed.

- this aspect was exaggerated by missionaries who claimed that it showed demonic influence and by government officials who claimed that it showed communist influence! Nevertheless, the oathing was harsh and some people began to be coerced into it and were killed if they refused. Ultimately, it proved divisive also; Kikuyu Christians especially came to be alienated and became enemies of Mau Mau.

- it was argued at the time that Mau Mau was mainly anti-White and there were a number of attacks on white settlers, a few of whom were killed. However, analysis shows that such attacks were isolated and were not systematic; Mau Mau fighters killed far more Africans than whites.

State of Emergency

 - as a result of rising protests and violence, a state of emergency was declared in Oct. 1952. Extra troops were brought to Kenya, including the King’s African Rifles which was modelled on British Indian Regiments—African troops with white officers.

Mau Mau insurgents—the guerrilla fighters were never more than a few thousand and those numbers began to dwindle with attrition. Control by a single command was never complete and the insurgents broke down into several smaller groups. The insurgents were dependent on sympathisers to provide a continuing flow of food and supplies.

Government measures—vigorous and harsh:

 - in fact, the war began to take on elements of civil war between the Kikuyu. The oathings were repugnant to African Christians; those who refused to take the oaths were killed. Also, as the British measures were cutting off supplies, the guerrillas began to use coercion and raids. This began to alienate the sympathisers.

- also, as the state of emergency continued, more people wanted it to end. Having to live in the fortified villages was especially hard on the women; they often had to travel much longer distances to and from their fields each day.

- nevertheless, the position of the British government was not good either. Britain had emerged from World War 2 greatly impoverished and post-war conditions and commitments were far beyond its resources. Independence movements (a long guerrilla war in Malaysia) plus a world wide network of naval and military bases were beyond its economic and foreign exchange capabilities. The Mau Mau emergency was like the proverbial straw (and the Suez Canal fiasco came in the middle).

- this was the real problem. The Mau Mau quickly ceased to be a real military threat (although they continued to tie up British troops until 1960), but to a British public which was still enduring rationing of some goods and had over a decade and a half of lower standards of living, the costs were too high. Moreover, mass nationalist movements were emerging in almost every British colony with the possibility of additional uprisings. Maintaining the empire was an expense and a luxury the British public were no longer willing to bear. The Mau Mau uprising is thus considered a very important factor in bringing the Conservative Government of Harold Macmillan to adopt the ‘winds of change’ in 1959.


Independence in Francophone Africa

- recall that until World War 2, the policy was association. This meant separate structures for administration, law, political rights, etc.

- after 1945, association was abandoned and policy veered towards assimilation.

- two main political parties emerged in the African colonies and these affiliated with socialist and communist parties in France. In the multi-party situation in the French parliament, the African representatives added another element, but they never formed a block; Africans were participants in many (perhaps most) government coalitions in the post-1945 period. Most African politicians had political roots in only one African colony and there tended to be a dominant leader and party in each colony.

- one area of debate among African politicians was whether the federations should be strengthened or weakened vis-a-vis the individual colonies. There was a preference for weakening the federations as leaders usually had a power base in only one colony and wanted to strengthen that power base.

Loi Cadre of 1956

- this was an attempt to sort out the relationships in this system of greater France—i. e., relationships between metropolitan France and overseas France.

- it attempted to set up a kind of federal system with the French parliament and/or French government retaining control of foreign policy, defence, economic policy and relations within the Francophone community. Most other powers and responsibilities (legal systems, education, health policies, etc.) would go to the individual colonies rather than the federations.

[From the 1880s—>World War 1, this was the sort of thing which British imperial federationists had talked about and wanted to achieve for Britain and the white dominions. However, responsible government had already given colonial politicians control of internal affairs, and they were more inclined to try to expand their powers by acquiring more responsibility for matters still of imperial responsibility; i.e., they preferred to be big fish in a little pond rather than little fish in a large sea. The process was greatly speeded up by World War 1; by 1931 and the Statute of Westminster, the dominions had become fully autonomous in political decision-making. This seems to be the natural tendency in such situations.]

 - this entire approach was overtaken by events. As we have noted before, the crisis was brought on by the bitter, costly war in Algeria. France (along with much of Europe) was still not fully recovered from the economic effects of World War 2 although the beginnings of European economic union were having positive benefits. The war in Indochina (Vietnam) culminating in defeat in 1953 had been costly in lives and economic costs.

- the war in Algeria also escalated with rising costs and growing numbers of dead. The war became increasingly vicious with both sides committing atrocities and indiscriminate slaughter. Thus, from every point of view (including the moral) the war became unpopular and indefensible. What did France get out it? Mostly, they were fighting to protect and maintain several hundred thousand ‘colons’—white settlers—and their privileged position.

- under growing public pressure in France, politicians were starting to talk about withdrawal. Settlers were of course opposed to this ‘betrayal’, but even more serious was the opposition of many military officers. The latter were absolutely opposed to another humiliation of defeat as had happened in Vietnam. The settlers by themselves were not in a really strong position because it was clear that they were absolutely dependent in the French army.

- there began a conspiracy among a number of officers to stage a coup d’état in France in order to continue the struggle in Algeria.

De Gaulle’s Return

 - De Gaulle was able to defuse the conspiracy by rallying most officers against it and to arrest the most important ringleaders. He was able to proceed with the withdrawal, including the repatriation of most ‘colons’. However, he wanted to avoid future recurrences in other colonies even though there were no serious problems elsewhere. Another motive undoubtedly was a desire to lessen the involvement of colonial areas in political decision-making in France (African politicians were mostly allied with parties of the left); he was in the process of proposing a new constitution for France. He wanted to replace the idea of ‘Greater France’ with the idea of a ‘community’.

- as a replacement, he proposed to carry the Loi Cadre further. His proposal was similar to ‘dominion’ status in the British Empire just after World War 1 but before the Statute of Westminster. Each colony would have autonomy in internal affairs, while the French parliament and government would still handle matters such as foreign affairs and defence; the colonies would no longer be represented in the French parliament. The colonies would remain part of the franc block which would retain the system of trade preferences.

- he then gave African leaders a choice—accept the new arrangements in the ‘community’ or accept complete independence.

- all except Guinea initially indicated a choice to remain part of the community; Sekou Touré, the communist-affiliated political leader in Guinea and a close friend of Kwame Nkrumah, opted immediately for independence.

- however, after being assured that French subsidies to the colonies and trade preferences would be maintained even if they chose independence, most leaders changed their minds and opted for independence. Thus, independence came to Francophone colonies in a rather different way from British colonies; there were no large independence movements or even significant demands for independence being put forward. To some extent, Francophone colonies were nudged out of the imperial nest.

- nevertheless, it does seem likely that the growing focus of politicians on local colonial areas would have brought a trend such as was seen in the British dominions. Moreover, the achievement of independence of British African colonies would have provided a powerful example and incentive, as it did in 1961 anyway.

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