The 1950s were a transformative era for the African continent, witnessing a dramatic shift in the status quo of colonial rule by European powers. This period, marked by growing nationalism and the desire for self-determination, saw numerous African countries embarking on the path to independence. The political map of Africa underwent significant changes, reflecting the evolving administrative divisions and the emergence of new sovereign states.
Africa, administrative divisions, 1 September 1960. United States. Central Intelligence Agency, [1960]. Geography and Map Division.
The Scramble for Africa and its Legacy
The "Scramble for Africa" between 1870 and 1914 had resulted in almost the entire continent being claimed as colonies by European powers. Almost all the precolonial states of Africa lost their sovereignty. This period of intense European imperialism left a lasting impact on the political landscape of Africa, with colonial boundaries often disregarding existing ethnic and tribal divisions.
In the early 20th century, nationalism gained ground globally. Following the end of World War I, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires according to the principles espoused in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. Though many anti-colonial intellectuals saw the potential of Wilsonianism to advance their aims, Wilson had no intention of applying the principle of self-determination outside the lands of the defeated Central Powers.
Many Africans fought in both World War I and World War II. Approximately one million sub-Saharan Africans served in European armies in some capacity.
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The Rise of Independence Movements
The seeds of independence were sown in the early 20th century, with the rise of nationalism and the growing awareness of self-determination. In the 1930s, colonial powers cultivated, sometimes inadvertently, a small elite of local African leaders educated in Western universities, where they became familiar with ideas such as self-determination. Many African independence movements took place in the 20th century, when a wave of struggles for independence in European-ruled African territories were witnessed.
World War II (1939-1945) served as the catalyst for many of these movements, as it devastated both the colonial empires and their African territories. After WW2, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill introduced the Atlantic Charter, which declared that the United States and Britain would "respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." The United Nations was also formed, and colonial powers were required to make annual reports on their territories, and it gave Africans a voice to list their grievances.
On 6 March 1957, Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) became the first sub-Saharan African country to gain its independence from European colonisation. Starting with the 1945 Pan-African Congress, the Gold Coast's (modern-day Ghana's) independence leader Kwame Nkrumah made his focus clear. In the conference's declaration, he wrote, "We believe in the rights of all peoples to govern themselves. We affirm the right of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny.
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave the famous "Wind of Change" speech in South Africa, in February 1960, where he spoke to the country's Parliament of "the wind of change blowing through this continent." Macmillan urgently wanted to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower with Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister of Ghana. Warren K. Leffler, [1958].
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CIA Maps: A Snapshot of Shifting Boundaries
The CIA, a prolific publisher of maps from its inception in the 1940s, produced a series of maps titled Africa administrative divisions. This series captures the changing political status of a large number of African countries in visual format.
Prior to 1959, the CIA’s Africa administrative divisions maps included a simple year in their title; beginning in 1959 and reflecting the rapid changes occurring across the continent, a month was added to the title, and multiple maps were published per year.
The excitement of 1960 began on the very first day of the year, when Cameroon gained its independence from France. By July 1960, just five months later, the pace of change had quickened. Five more countries are now marked “independent,” most of them from France: the Federation of Mali, Togo, and the Malagasy Republic.
The northern half of this next map, dated September 1960, is the most visibly changed. The French presence in north, west, and central Africa that was so pronounced prior to 1960 has all but vanished, save for Mauritania (“Projected independence - 1960”) and Algeria.
The last Africa administrative divisions map published in 1960 shows that the tide of independence continued its sweep across the continent through the very last month of the year (and indeed through most of the 1960s). Mauritania and Nigeria have achieved independence, and Sierra Leone is projected to join them in 1961.
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Looking at one more map in the Africa administrative divisions series, dated May 1961, we can see that the pace of change has slowed: only Sierra Leone has joined the ranks of independent nations since December 1960.
In May 1961, the map is dominated by independent countries, both new and old. France retains a toehold in the form of Algeria, Djibouti, and the Comoro Islands, as well as the island of Réunion, a French possession to this day.
Notable too are the names which have changed from the 1959 CIA map, and those which have changed since. By 1961, Soudan has become Mali, named after the medieval West African empire.
Challenges of Decolonization
The decolonisation of Africa was a series of political developments in Africa that spanned from the mid-1950s to 1975, during the Cold War. Colonial governments gave way to sovereign states in a process often marred by violence, political turmoil, widespread unrest, and organised revolts.
British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau Uprising.
Unlike other European nations during the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese Estado Novo regime did not withdraw from its African colonies. During the 1960s, various armed independence movements became active in Portuguese Africa. The Portuguese Colonial War, also known as the Angolan, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambican War of Independence, was a 13-year-long conflict fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974.
French involvement in Algeria stretched back a century. The Algerian War started in 1954. The political crisis in France caused the collapse of the Fourth Republic, as Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958 and finally pulled the French soldiers and settlers out of Algeria by 1962.
By 1962, the National Liberation Front was able to negotiate a peace accord with de Gaulle, the Évian Accords in which Europeans would be able to return to their native countries, remain in Algeria as foreigners or take Algerian citizenship.
Almost all of the other African colonies were granted independence in 1960, following local referendums. Some colonies chose instead to remain part of France, under the status of overseas départements (territories).
The Enduring Legacy of Colonial Boundaries
It is also important to note that once African states gained freedom from European rule, they all became staunch defenders of the existing boundaries. The charter of the Organization of African Unity government thus contains an agreement by the signatory governments to "respect the frontiers [of all member states] existing on their achievement of national independence." In the extensive turbulence of postcolonial African politics, there have been very few attempts by states to take over significant portions of their neighbors' territories. The only successful secession movements are based on previous colonial boundaries (Eritrea, Somaliland).
Some scholars have argued that the existing boundaries are, nevertheless, arbitrary and that the states operating within them have attained only "juridical" as opposed to "empirical" sovereignty (Jackson and Rosberg). Juridical sovereignty refers to territorial entities maintained by agreements among outside powers (in this case both the international community and the rulers of other African states) rather than by real integration of the resident populations into a common political community.
The ongoing crises in such states as Angola, the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia suggest that colonial maps have not laid out a stable basis for nationhood in Africa. However, no alternative cartography suggests itself.
