Africa+(1014-1020)

= **Africa (1014-1020)** =

__ AFRICA AND THE GREAT WAR: __

 * Many belligerents were colonial powers in Africa; nearly every colonly took sides except spanish controlled territories which remained neutral.
 * German colonial administration faced combined colonial forces of Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal, but they were able to hold them off until the very end of the war.﻿Britain wanted to maintain naval supremacy and to gain the spoils of war after victory. France wanted to regain lands earlier taken by Germany. The German's were easily outnumbered 10 to 1, but maintained a strong position against some 60,000 Allied troops until late in the war
 * Large number of Africans participated actively in the war as soldiers or carriers. Carriers came from 3 sources: volunteers, levies supplied by African chiefs that consisted of volunteer and impressed personnel, and through formal conscription.
 * During the war, Africans challenged European colonial authority. One reason for this was because European personnel were slowly leaving so they thought that they would be weaker, but the main reason was from resentment and hatred engendered by the compulsory conscription of soldiers and carriers.
 * Colonial authorities ruthlessly put down all the revolts.

__ THE COLONIAL ECONOMY: __

 * 1) After the war Africa was transformed by the pursuit of two economic objectives by colonial powers: They made sure that the colonized paid for the institutions that kept them in subjugation, and they developed export-oriented economies characterized by the exchange of unprocessed raw materials or minimally processed cash crops for manufactured goods from abroad.
 * 2) Previously self-sufficient African economies were destroyed in favor of colonial economies dependent upon a European-dominated economy.
 * 3) During the Great Depression, colonial economies suffered as trade volume and prices fell dramatically.
 * 4) Africa's economic integration required infrastructure. Although Europeans claimed they had given Africa its first modern infrastructure, Europeans and their businesses were usually its main beneficiaries. The infrastructure linked agricultural and mineral wealth of the colony to the outside world.
 * 5) Farming and Mining were the main enterprises in colonial economies. The white people owned all the enterprises, and used different taxation policies to drive African's into the labor market. The large areas of rich land were controlled by Europeans, but some African's became cash crop farmers or wage laborers on plantations or in mines to pay the taxes on their land, houses, livestock, and the people themselves.
 * 6) Colonial taxation was an important tool designed to drive Africans into the labor market. Where taxation failed to create a malleable native labor force, colonial officials resorted to outright forced labor. Similar to slavery. This work could be extremely brutal, thousands of workers died from starvation, disease, and maltreatment.

__ AFRICAN NATIONALISM: __

 * 1) After the Great War, European powers consolidated their political control over Africa and imposed economies designed to exploit Africa's natural and labor resources.
 * 2) Nationalism began to grow when ideas concerning self-determination and the notion of the accountability of colonial powers reached Africa.
 * 3) An emerging class of native urban intellectuals, a new African elite, became heavily involved in these movements offering freedom from colonial rule and new ideas concerning African identity. Members of this elite class were often educated in Europe. Jomo Kenyatta (1895-1978) spent almost 15 years in Europe attending schools and universities. With this education, he later led Kenya to independence from the British. He is a good example of this new elite class.
 * 4) African nationalists embraced European concept of the nation-state as the best model for realizing their goals of mobilizing resources, organizing societies, and resisting colonial rule.
 * 5) Different opinions prevailed regarding what constituted a people's national identity. Some people started to base identity on ethnicities, religion, and languages of precolonial times, and believed that institutions were crucial for these identities. Pan-Africanists such as Marcus Garvey called for the unification of all people of African descent into a single African State. Others based identity on geography, they would build nations on the basis of borders that defined existing colonial states.
 * 6) These ideas weren't translated into demands for independence from colonial rule until after World War II.