By Tony Chafer
To be able to restoration her world-power prestige France was once desirous to retain her abroad empire on the finish of the second one global battle. but simply fifteen years later she had decolonized, and by means of 1960 just a couple of small island territories remained below French regulate.
The means of decolonization in Indochina and Algeria has been greatly studied, yet less has been written approximately decolonization in France's greatest colony, French West Africa. the following, the French method used to be considered as exemplary—that is, a gentle transition effectively controlled through well-intentioned French politicians and enlightened African leaders. Overturning this acquired knowledge, Chafer argues that the quick unfurling of occasions after the second one global warfare was once a posh, piecemeal and unpredictable strategy, leading to a "successful decolonization" that was once completed mostly accidentally. At independence, the winners guaranteed the reins of political strength, whereas the losers have been frequently repressed, imprisoned, or silenced.
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Extra resources for The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization?
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28 – Prelude to Decolonization Approaches to Colonial Rule: Assimilation and Association The question of the approach France should adopt to governing its African Empire gave rise to much debate among French politicians, colonial administrators and academics. In this debate, the concept of assimilation has traditionally been opposed to that of association. The basic idea underpinning assimilation was to recreate France overseas. There were a number of different dimensions to this. Firstly, it could mean the representation of the colonies in the parliament of the mother country.
19. 20. 21. velles Editions Africaines, 1982) and La Balkanisation de l’Afrique Occidentale Française (Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1979). See for example J. L. Hymans, Léopold Sédar Senghor. An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh University Press, 1971); J. G. Vaillant, Black, French and African. A Life of Léopold Sédar Senghor (Harvard University Press, 1990); S. Kobelé-Keita, Ahmed Sekou Touré, l’homme du 28 septembre (INRDG, 1977); I. B. Kake, Sekou Touré: le héros et le tyran (Jeune Afrique, 1987); D.
Gradual withdrawal with appropriate compromise and the positioning of friendly élites would make sense if it could be engineered. Britain sought to do this and maintain global influence by, in effect, substituting an imperial role for colonial rule. In order to achieve this, a three-pronged strategy was pursued: to shed colonial ‘liabilities’ so as to be better able to exploit remaining assets; to cultivate ‘friendly’ nationalists in these remaining colonial territories; and to share the costs of this new imperial role with the US through the ‘special relationship’.