The Political Kingdom in Independent Africa
The Political Kingdom in Independent Africa
This chapter examines the most revolutionary aspect of Africa’s independence: the attempt to build a large number of states during peace, with particular emphasis on the boundaries and state system that the Africans constructed for themselves. After gaining independence in the early 1960s, African leaders were faced with a major dilemma. If the states, with their colonial power gradients, were to change, the new leaders would have to give up many of the newly tasted benefits of power and face considerable uncertainty about their own fate and the fate of their nations. The chapter considers how leaders in independent Africa confronted the problem of how to extend power over their territories given the incomplete and highly variable administrative systems they inherited from the Europeans.
Keywords: states, peace, boundaries, power, independent Africa, Europe
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