The ideological scramble for Africa : how the pursuit of anticolonial modernity shaped a postcolonial order, 1945-1966

In The Ideological Scramble for Africa , Frank Gerits examines how African leaders in the 1950s and 1960s crafted an anticolonial modernization project. Rather than choose Cold War sides between East and West, anticolonial nationalists worked to reverse the psychological and cultural destruction of colonialism. Kwame Nkrumah's African Union was envisioned as a federation of liberation to challenge the extant imperial forces: the US empire of liberty, the Soviet empire of equality, and the European empires of exploitation. In the 1950s, the goal of proving the potency of a pan-African ideology shaped the agenda of the Bandung Conference and Ghana's support for African liberation, while also determining what was at stake in the Congo crisis and in the fight against white minority rule in southern and eastern Africa. In the 1960s, the attempt to remake African psychology was abandoned, and socioeconomic development came into focus. Anticolonial nationalists did not simply resist or utilize imperial and Cold War pressures but drew strength from the example of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, in which Toussaint Louverture demanded the universal application of Europe's Enlightenment values. The liberationists of the postwar period wanted to redesign society in the image of the revolution that had created them. The Ideological Scramble for Africa demonstrates that the Cold War struggle between capitalism and Communism was only one of two ideological struggles that picked up speed after 1945; the battle between liberation and imperialism proved to be more enduring. In The Ideological Scramble for Africa, Frank Gerits examines how African leaders in the 1950s and 1960s crafted an anticolonial modernization project. Rather than choose Cold War sides between East and West, anticolonial nationalists worked to reverse the psychological and cultural destruction of colonialism.Kwame Nkrumah's African Union was envisioned as a federation of liberation to challenge the extant imperial forces: the US empire of liberty, the Soviet empire of equality, and the European empires of exploitation. In the 1950s the goal of proving the potency of a pan-African ideology shaped the agenda of the Bandung Conference and Ghana's support for African liberation, while also determining what was at stake in the Congo crisis and the fight against white minority rule in Southern and Eastern Africa. In the 1960s, the attempt to remake African psychology was abandoned and socio-economic development came into focus. Anticolonial nationalists did not simply resist or utilize imperial and Cold War pressures, but drew strength from the example of the Haitian revolution, which in 1791 had demanded the universal application of Europe's Enlightenment values. The liberationists of the post-war period wanted to redesign society in the image of the revolution that had created them. The Ideological Scramble for Africa demonstrates that the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism was only one of two ideological struggles that picked up speed after 1945; the battle between liberation and imperialism proved to be more enduring project_muse_101500-3356480 10.1515_9781501767920 Contents Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Introduction: How African Liberation Shaped the International System Chapter 1 A Foreign Policy of the Mind, 1945–1954 Chapter 2 Offering Hungry Minds a Better Development Project, 1955–1956 Chapter 3 The Pan-African Path to Modernity, 1957–1958 Chapter 4 Redefining Decolonization in the Sahara, 1959–1960 Chapter 5 The Congo Crisis as the Litmus Test for Psychological Modernization, 1960–1961 Chapter 6 Managing the Effects of Modernization, 1961–1963 Chapter 7 The Struggle to Defeat Racial Modernity in South Africa and Rhodesia, 1963–1966 Chapter 8 The Collapse of Anticolonial Modernization, 1963–1966 Conclusion: How Decolonization Made Our Times Abbreviations Notes Bibliography of Primary Sources Index "After 1945 African nationalists were drawn into a battle for African hearts and minds. Rather than choose between East or West, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana promoted a vision of anticolonial modernity and competed with imperial, communist, and capitalist modernization schemes to prove the superiority of his plan for postcolonial order"-- Provided by publisher