Decolonization In The Middle East And Africa

Essay, Research Paper

Africa dealt with gaining its independence and recovering from internal conflict. Since most of Africa was colonies of European, colonized Africa tried hard to gain its independence and organized together against Europe.

Even though there were organized up rising against Europe, most of these organizations were independent tribes. These tribes were divided by religion (Muslims in the north and Christians and animists in the south) and by language. The division between the tribes was so wide spread that it is recorded that one tribe leader had said, ?the members of the other regions might well belong to another world as far as we were concerned.?

The areas where uprisings first occurred were on the Gold Coast in the west and in Kenya in the east. These uprisings were violently centered on the white that inhabitant those regions. For instance, in Kenya the dominant tribe rose up against the white inhabitants of the land. Jomo Kenyatta led the violent rebellion. The people of the tribe called the rebellion the Land Freedom Army. It took Britain four years to subsidize the conflict.

The British took control of the uprising by manipulating the surrounding tribes and organizing them to revolt against Kenyatta. In the end Britain sentenced Kenyatta to seven years in prison. Many years later there were many more conflicts that rose up against Europe.

However, there was one in particular that was the first to obtain its goal towards independence. The uprising took place on the Atlantic coast in Ghana. A man by the name of Kwame Nkrumah led the revolt. Educated in the west, Nkrumah was a skillful organizer who was committed to the freedom of his land; he began in the 1940?s. Finally in 1949 he was able to unit rural and urban groups that included some Muslims from the north into a group called the Convention People?s party.

Nkrumah seeking independence through and independent state and organizing the people together using words from the bible soon found independence in the 1950?s. In the 1950?s Britain and France decided to end the colonialization in Africa as soon as possible. Their money did not out last the determination of the African tribal people.

However, in the Middle East independence had already been won but the western countries wanted the newly found oil that it had begun refining oil. Egypt?s leaders in their newly found government were ignorant to what should be done for the growth of their country. They had ideas, mainly seeking new revenues from their oil reserves. Nasser, the leader of Egypt believed that they were the natural leaders of the country. The few principles that they had developed were vague and not specific for the growth of the country. They planned to remove the troops from the Suez Canal, end feudalism, reforms for social justice, and to build a strong national army.

The leaders were separated on the fact of how they thought the country should have been governed. Nasser on one had believed that the country should keep the military in control. However, other officers planned to develop a democratic government returning the control back to the people. Nasser?s victory was soon to come. He soon restored the might of the military, he placed his friends in key governmental positions and Nasser soon became principal leader of Egypt.

Nasser and his friends developed a new type of authoritarianism, which was first called the Liberation Rally. Over the following decades the name would change often. In 1956, he developed a new constitution that never obtained any law giving power. However, Nasser operated a secret police that worked outside of the law. The secret police was used to attack all of Nasser?s enemies.

Nasser eventually developed a foreign policy that would crumble Egypt because it dwindled the chance for United States aid and was a conflict with Israel. Through his policy, he would not ally with any neighboring country. Nasser was willing to go to war with Israel however his army was not yet powerful enough. Nasser sought aid from the United States for modern weapons. The United States hesitated offer aid to Egypt due to the fact that it was afraid of the out come of its assistance.

In 1955, the Soviet Union began to give aid to Egypt. Now Egypt was receiving aid from both the United States and the Soviet Union. Nasser soon went through long debates to see if his financers would finance his dam project. After a year of debates the United States backed out of the project that in turn completely emberaced Nasser and eventually war in the Middle east.

Soon after the humiliation Nasser went to war with Israel. Egypt became victorious over that conflict by blocking navigation of Suez Canal with sunken ships. For the next year an economic recession swept through Europe due to a lack of petroleum shortage. In years to come Nasser left nationalism and adopted a socialist government. In doing this it offer two rewards for Nasser. One it expanded the control over the economy allowing him to increase revenues. And secondly it reminded him that his rivals style of government, feudalism, were in the past.