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Three Case Studies in African Nationalism

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Three Case Studies in African Nationalism Kwame Nkrumah Gold Coast/Ghana L opold Senghor Senegal Jomo Kenyatta Kenya Kwame Nkrumah: Pan-Africanism and ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Three Case Studies in African Nationalism


1
Three Case Studies inAfrican Nationalism
2
  • Kwame NkrumahGold Coast/Ghana
  • Léopold SenghorSenegal
  • Jomo KenyattaKenya

3
Kwame NkrumahPan-Africanism and Development
4
Kwame Nkrumah
  • Born 1909 to a fairly poor family
  • He excelled in school and became a teacher, but
    in 1935 managed to secure a scholarship to study
    theology in the US
  • In the US he combined study with networking and,
    in particular, friendships with Marxists from the
    African diaspora
  • He returned to Ghana following the Pan-African
    Congress of 1945

5
Nkrumahs Rise
  • 1947 Formation of the United Gold Coast
    Convention, made up of coastal lawyers and
    businessmenNkrumah was elected president
  • 1948 Police open fire on peaceful
    demonstration, which prompted riotingcolonial
    government arrested Nkrumah
  • Nkrumah had nothing to do with the rioting, but
    his arrest made him a celebrity
  • Following his release from prison, Nkrumah
    founded Convention Peoples Party, a more radical
    version of the UGCC.

6
  • The CPP campaigned for independence with an
    emphasis on the areas industrial development and
    progress
  • British began incremental moves towards
    self-government for Gold Coast
  • 1954 elections were held for internally sovereign
    government
  • In 1957, Nkrumah became the prime minister of the
    independent nation of Ghana, but some British
    officials remained

7
Significance of Ghana
  • NamePan-African reference to the medieval
    kingdom (actually located in present-day Mali)
  • Transition to independence dominated by one party
    (Convention Peoples Party)
  • Small, relatively coherent country (population of
    approx. 5 million)
  • Ghana set the precedent for African independence
    but also proved to be an atypical case

8
Nkrumah and Ghana
  • Nkrumah envisioned Ghanas independence in the
    first step towards African unification
  • He believed such a unification was necessary to
    be able to compete economically and politically
  • In order for Africa to claim its place among
    other nations, he believed, it would have to
    experience the same kind of industrial revolution
    or technological shift that other areas had
    experienced

9
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10
Léopold SenghorThe Triumph of Assimilationism?
11
Léopold Senghor
  • Born into a polygamous family in Joal, Senegal
    (near but outside the Quatre Communes) in 1906
  • He went to Catholic boarding school at the age of
    8 and considered becoming a priest
  • His skill in such subjects as Greek and Latin won
    him a scholarship to study in France at the
    Sorbonne
  • In 1935 he became the first African certified as
    a lysée teacher

12
  • Senghor taught in a number of French schools
    while also writing poetry
  • He became a major proponent of the Negritude
    movement
  • In 1939, he enrolled in the French army
  • He was captured in 1940 and became a POW

13
Prayer for Peace, Léopold Senghor, 1940
  • Lord God, forgive white Europe!
  • Yes, it is true, Lord, that for four centuries of
    enlightenment
  • She has thrown her spit and her baying watchdogs
    on my lands
  • And Christians, renouncing Your light and Your
    gentle hear
  • Have lighted their camps with my parchments,
  • Tortured my followers, deported my doctors and
    scientists.
  • I want to pray especially for France.
  • Lord, among white nations, place France at the
    Fathers right hand.
  • Oh, I know she, too, is Europe, that she has
    snatched my children
  • Like a cattle-rustling brigand from the north
  • To fatten her lands with sugarcane and cotton
  • Since black sweat is fertilizer.
  • Yes, Lord, forgive France, who hates occupying
    forces
  • And yet imposes such strict occupation on me
  • Who offers a heros welcome to some, and treats
  • The Senegalese like mercenaries, the Empires
    black watchdogs.
  • Oh, Lord, take from my memory France that is not
    France,
  • This mask of meanness and hate on the face of
    France

14
Towards Independence
  • Senghor did not actively campaign for
    independence from France
  • He was the head of the local council of Senegal
    when he was elected president of the newly
    independent nation in 1960
  • Senghor retained French advisors and remained a
    strong supporter of French language education and
    francophonie

15
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16
Jomo KenyattaThe Power of Ethnicity
17
Invention Paradigms
  • T.O. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition
  • Leroy Vail, The Invention of Tribalism
  • Culture is shaped and deployed in ways dictated
    more by the present than by the past
  • Invention can be conscious or unconscious
  • Invention does not occur in a vacuumpeople use
    the cultural materials available to them
  • Critics have argued that the invention
    paradigms are condescending and do not take
    seriously peoples self-descriptions and
    self-conceptions

18
Anthropology and Colonialism
  • The discipline of anthropology developed during
    the last quarter of the 19th century
  • Interested in studying human difference
    (especially in primitive settings)

19
  • Anthropology tended to assume a divide between
    dynamic civilized societies and static
    uncivilized societies
  • Anthropology provided an intellectual foundation
    for European ideas about tribalism and tradition,
    while individual anthropologists often worked
    within colonial administrations
  • In the 1920s, Bronislaw Malinowski pioneered
    so-called functionalist anthropologyaimed at
    understanding the function, rather than the
    meaning, of culture

20
Culture Brokers
  • Term coined by Leroy Vail
  • Refers to African elitesoften mission
    educatedwho sought to reinforce what they saw as
    tradition
  • Often used the ideas of tradition and tribe
    in attempts to strengthen African position in
    negotiations with colonial authorities

21
Jomo Kenyatta
  • Born Kamau wa Ngengi in 1889, educated in mission
    schools and baptized as John Peter, later went by
    the name Johnstone Kamau
  • Worked as a clerk in the colonial administration
  • In 1924, joined the Kikuyu Central Association,
    an explicitly tribal political group
  • In 1929, the KCA sent him to London to lobby the
    British government on Kikuyu land claims
  • Attended several schools in the UK and the USSR
    before enrolling in University College London to
    study anthropology with Bronislaw Malinowski

22
  • Facing Mount Kenya, an ethnography of the Kikuyu
    was his doctoral dissertation, published in 1938
  • Remained resident in London until 1946during
    this period he married a (white) English woman
    and had a child with her
  • He returned to Kenya and became president of the
    newly formed Kenya African Union, campaigning for
    independence from British rule

23
Mau Mau
  • Diffuse uprising in Kenya, 1952-1960
  • Land and Freedom Army, mostly Kikuyu (but did
    not include all Kikuyu)
  • Oathing system played on established ritual
    frameworks
  • Mau Mau conflicts largely rural, involving
    guerilla type actions
  • Draconian British response included the arrest of
    Kenyattanot a Mau Mau leader

24
Towards Independence
  • Despite his background in ethnic organizing,
    Kenyatta was elected prime minister in 1963 on a
    platform of national unity
  • He sought reconciliation with the white settler
    community, asking them to remain in Kenya
  • Despite this emphasis on unification, the tension
    between Kenyattas Kikuyu identity and the
    nations Kenyan identity remained
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