Professor Ichiro Maekawa’s research paper ‘Cold War and Decolonisation: The British Response to the Soviet Union Anti-colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa’ has been published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 51-1, 2023, pp. 182-210.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fich20/51/1
ABSTRACT: This study examined the British response to the Soviet Union’s expansion and the rapid onset of the Cold War in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Soviet Union considered ‘The Third World’ the primary battlefield of the Cold War and took advantage of the international trend of anti-colonialism to exert pressure on the West. At the same time, the Soviet Union promised Africans economic development and improved living standards after African countries achieved independence and relentlessly disseminated anti-colonial propaganda at the United Nations and in the region. The Soviet Union’s anti-colonialist propaganda offended Britain by repudiating the liberal imperial ideas that British policymakers believed in and proclaimed at the time. As Britain faced criticism of neo-colonialism, the nation moved towards decolonisation, opting to continue with an ‘informal empire’ backed by the United States. The spread of anti-colonialism in sub-Saharan British Africa, as African nations strove for independence, and Britain’s response to this period of change should be read within a larger narrative rather than as a chapter in decolonisation history. This narrative offers clues to understanding Britain’s struggle for survival post-empire.
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