UAC and African Nationalism

Abstract

Abstract There has been much speculation about the attitude of European capitalist firms to the movement towards political independence in Africa during the fifteen or so years after the end of the Second World War. Did the big trading and mining companies fear and oppose such a movement on the ground that independence might destroy the favourable conditions created by colonial rule, or did they welcome it, on the assumption that colonialism had by then so reconstructed African societies that capitalism would not only be safe but potentially more profitable? There have so far been few detailed studies of the attitude of such foreign firms.