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    Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa
    Unavailable
    Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa
    Unavailable
    Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa
    Ebook613 pages8 hours

    Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa

    By Lawrence James

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The one hundred year history of how Europe coerced the African continent into its various empires—and the resulting story of how Africa succeeded in decolonization.

    In this dramatic (and often tragic) story of an era that radically changed the course of world history, Lawrence James investigates how, within one hundred years, Europeans persuaded and coerced Africa into becoming a subordinate part of the modern world. His narrative is laced with the experiences of participants and onlookers and introduces the men and women who, for better or worse, stamped their wills on Africa. The continent was a magnet for the high-minded, the adventurous, the philanthropic, the unscrupulous. Visionary pro-consuls rubbed shoulders with missionaries, explorers, soldiers, big-game hunters, entrepreneurs, and physicians.

    Between 1830 and 1945, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the United States exported their languages, laws, culture, religions, scientific and technical knowledge and economic systems to Africa. The colonial powers imposed administrations designed to bring stability and peace to a continent that appeared to lack both. The justification for occupation was emancipation from slavery—and the common assumption that late nineteenth-century Europe was the summit of civilization.

    By 1945 a transformed continent was preparing to take charge of its own affairs, a process of decolonization that took a quick twenty years. This magnificent history also pauses to ask: what did not happen and why?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPegasus Books
    Release dateJun 6, 2017
    ISBN9781681774992
    Unavailable
    Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa
    Author

    Lawrence James

    Lawrence James studied History and English at York University and subsequently undertook a research degree at Merton College, Oxford. Following a career as a teacher, he became a full-time writer in 1985, and is the author of The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, Imperial Warrior: The Life and Times of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, and the acclaimed Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. He now lives in St. Andrews.

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    • 4/5
      Overview of colonial history of Africa from French conquest of Algeria in 1830 to the collapse of the Apartheid regime in South Africa in 1990. The book covers the competition between European empires to carve up the African continent, to varying degees of success. Some European powers like Belgium treated their colonies as outright slave-holdings. French egalitarian and republican principles sat poorly with the country's Imperial ambitions. Racism was baked into European attitudes, especially under Fascist regimes of the early 20th century, such as Nazi-dominated Vichy-France in WWII. Racism from their masters and their participation World War One and Two led African soldiers to a desire for independence in their home countries; it did not escape notice that European countries were liberated or decolonised after the wars but not African ones. After the Second World War, independence movements became embroiled in the Cold War between the United States of America and the U.S.S.R. Both sides provided money and weapons to various proto-independence movements across Africa, as European influence declined. Unfortunately this often resulted in military coups, unstable governments propped up by one or another Cold War powers, and single-party dictatorships supported as a bulwark against the other side. The Cold War both accelerated and stymied the development of independent African countries. South Africa was the final country to be decolonised, when Russian and Cuban support was withdrawn from the continent at the end of the Cold War.I got a good insight into the regions of Africa and how their conquering European powers affected their development. Each chapter was split into very readable short sections.