exceptions, were simply not considered capable of
learning technological skills: Europeans tended to
regard them as more like children.
But, in the last resort, neither prejudice nor
government policies dictated African economic
development as decisively as the workings of a
global capitalist economy in the twentieth cen-
tury. The dependence of the African economies
on the West for their monetary system, credit and
development and for the nurturing of African
resources and trade was so well set by the time of
independence in the 1950s and 1960s that funda-
mental changes would have been difficult to bring
about. Black Africa in the 1990s remained chiefly
in the role of primary producer; attempts to create
self-sustaining growth through industrial produc-
tion, as in the West or in parts of Asia, had ended
in failure. But manufacture was increasing and
beginning to substitute manufactured imports.
The primary products were restricted to two or
three in each country, so that African wealth con-
tinued to be largely dependent on the world prices
of these commodities, whether of oil as in Nigeria
and the Gabon or of phosphates and cacao in
Togo or of diamonds and coffee in the Central
African Republic. Meanwhile food production in
Africa had not kept pace with population growth;
in the 1980s and 1990s Ethiopia suffered from
terrible famines. Looking to the future, the spread
of AIDS was yet another devastating problem
faced by black Africa, whose own resources were
inadequate to cope with the crisis.
The imperialist European nations were parsi-
monious when it came to colonial expenditures.
The British, French and Portuguese relied on
private finance, the great chartered companies
such as the Niger Company and the British South
Africa Company, which in return for subjugating
and administrating stretches of Africa received
trade and land concessions in the conquered ter-
ritories. The opening of Africa was accomplished
by force and by African manual labour. Nowhere
was this human exploitation conducted with
greater systematic cruelty than in King Leopold’s
personal fief in the Congo. Here the creation of
an administration, of an infrastructure of roads
and of a labour force to collect rubber resulted in
torture and genocide. Even white Europe, used
to regarding black people as racially inferior, was
shocked when this state of affairs was revealed
shortly before the First World War.
But this was not an isolated instance. In the
process of developing Africa’s resources, the Euro-
pean was not prepared to undertake the unskilled
manual work necessary to harvest plantations,
extract ores from mines or construct the roads
and railways to the coast. A conscripted force of
black people, in conditions at times worse than
slavery, created the foundations of modern Africa.
Feudal conditions of forced native service per-
sisted in French West Africa as late as 1946. In
South Africa, cash taxes could be paid by black
people only if they earned cash in the mines. Men
were recruited on contracts, running for a year or
other specified periods, and immigrant labour
became a feature of African economic life. The
continent’s human reservoir was also used beyond
its shores. Africans were no longer sent across the
Atlantic to develop other continents; they were
used in the twentieth century to develop Africa
and so created the profit necessary for further
development. But the financial investment came
from outside Africa; the technological skills were
also almost entirely confined to the white man,
which left black Africa dependent and weak.
Moreover, during two world wars Africans sup-
plied soldiers in the internecine conflict of Europe.
How then did the colonial powers view Africa’s
future, how did they see the relationship between
the Africans and their conquerors? Would it for-
ever remain one of master and servant? The
European enlightenment had expounded the
notion of human progress. Africans could not be
entirely excluded; they were after all a part of the
human family. But crude racialism divided this
family and its state of civilisation by ‘colour’ from
white to black, with ‘brown’ Indians at an inter-
mediate stage. In the British Empire the white
people were regarded as fit to rule themselves;
Indian independence was accepted before 1914 as
inevitable at some distant date; but, for black
people, the time when they could be considered
ready was not even envisaged.
After the First World War the German colonies
of German East Africa, South-West Africa, the
Kamerun and Togoland were divided as spoils
1
THE END OF WHITE RULE IN WEST AFRICA 725
