Category: Africa

Africa – Political Overview
The political map of Africa shows the independent state structures of the post-colonial era. The first changes came with the end of the First World War. The defeated German Reich had to give up its colonial property, which fell to the victorious powers as a mandate area. Britain declared Egypt an independent kingdom in 1922, but retained a number of privileges in foreign policy and with regard to the Suez Canal. Long independent Ethiopia was conquered by fascist Italy in 1935/36, but was given independence again by Great Britain in 1941. During the Second World War, Italy lost all colonies except Somalia, which was granted to it as a UN trust territory for ten years in 1950.

DISMISSAL INTO INDEPENDENCE
After the dissolution of the colonial empires in Asia and America, the call for independence also increased in the countries of Africa. Most African states were gradually granted autonomy by the European colonial powers in the decades after the Second World War. This process was more or less peaceful almost everywhere, only in the former French colony of Algeria there was a war of liberation from 1954, which was fought with bitter severity until 1962.

The two great colonial powers France and Great Britain persecuted in decolonizationdifferent concepts and goals. Great Britain pursued the strategy of a gradual approach to state autonomy through constitutional reforms and through the establishment of parties and parliaments. Conflicts developed in Kenya, where the Mau-Mau secret society tried to enforce freedom with terror (1952–54) and in Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe. The 1965 constitution, which ensured political power for the white minority, was not revised until after a civil war. In 1968 Great Britain granted independence, Swaziland, the last African colony. Almost all of the former British colonies remained members of the “Commonwealth of Nations” and continue to accept the British monarchs as heads of state.

France, on the other hand, pursued the idea of ​​a “Union Francaise” of free and equal citizens who should speak the same language and enjoy the same rights. It soon became apparent that this solution did not meet the interests of the countries striving for national self-determination. A bloody war of liberation developed especially in Algeria. The French colonial empire dissolved in the course of this conflict until 1960, and Algeria gained independence in 1962. For more information about the continent of Africa, please check zipcodesexplorer.com.