Decolonization, Human Rights, and Anti-Communism

Abstract

The African continent is larger and more heterogeneous than most people not from the continent typically consider it to be, if they consider it at all. Flat maps contract landmasses around the equator, while stretching those around the poles—distorting our worldview and diminishing Africa’s true size and scope. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, much of the African continent was part of either the British or French empires, with a few nations colonized by Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Private United States (US) citizens and corporations had their own significant interests in Africa, which informed more formal US policymaking. Decolonization was not simply the negotiation of a political hand-off. The United States sought to overcome this tension in part through the provision of foreign aid. African leaders, activists, and intellectuals, for their part, sought economic and political equity for their people, often by leveraging access to science and technology.