บท 23: AFRICA NEO-COLONIALISM

Africa as a continent has a long history of at least 4 million years ; agriculture brought South West Asians to the continent via trade in what appears to date from the 6th or 5th millennium BC. Africa's first great civilization began in Egypt in 3400 BC; Phoenicians established Carthage in the 9th century and probably explored the northwestern coast as far as the Canary Islands, by the 1st century BC Romans conquered Carthage in 146 BC and controlled North Africa until the 4th century. Arabs started their conquest in the 7th century except in Ethiopia, where Muslim traders extended their religious practices of Islam across North Africa and South across the Sahara into the great medieval kingdoms of the West Sudan. The earliest of these kingdoms drew their wealth and power from the control of a lucrative trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves, but in ancient Ghana, the business was already thriving with Arabs in the 8th century. In the 13th century Ghana was conquered and incorporated into the kingdom of ancient Mali, famous for its gold and its wealthy capital of Timbuktu. In the late 15th century. Mali was conquered by the Songhai empire and lost many provinces but remained an autonomous kingdom. Few accounts were recorded of the southern half of the continent before 1500, but it appears from linguistic and archaeological evidence that the older inhabitants were gradually absorbed or displaced by agricultural, iron-working peoples speaking related Bantu languages who originated from near the modern Nigeria-Cameroon border. Between the 1st century BC and 1500, Bantu-speaking peoples became dominant over most of the continent establishing small farming villages and in placing powerful kingdoms, such as Kongo, Luba, and Mwememutapa. Prior to and after 1500, pastoralists moved south until they encountered the various Bantu groups and founded the kingdom of Kitara in the 16th cent. The subsequently founded the kingdoms of Bunyoro, Buganda, Rwanda, and Ankole, all of which had elaborate social structures based on a cattle-owning aristocracy. The period of European domination of Africa began in the 15th cent. with Portuguese exploration of the coasts of Africa in an attempt to establish a safe route to India and to tap the lucrative gold trade of Sudan and the east coast trade in gold, slaves, and ivory conducted for centuries by Arabs and Swahili. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope; in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached the east coast and, the following year, India. In the centuries that followed, coastal trading stations were established by Portugal and later by the Dutch, English, French, and other European maritime powers; under them the slave trade rapidly expanded. At the same time Ottoman Turks extended their control over North Africa and the shores of the Red Sea, and the Omani Arabs established suzerainty over the east coast as far south as Cape Delgado the east coast and, the following year, India. In the centuries that followed, coastal trading stations were established by Portugal and later by the Dutch, English, French, and other European maritime powers; under them the slave trade rapidly expanded. At the same time Ottoman Turks extended their control over North Africa and the shores of the Red Sea, and the Omani Arabs established suzerainty over the east coast as far south as Cape Delgado. Explorations in the 18th and 19th century reported the great natural wealth of the continent while capturing the imagination of Europeans, who viewed Africa as the Dark Continent. These were key factors in the ensuing wave of European imperialism; between 1880 and 1912 all of Africa except Liberia and Ethiopia fell under control of European powers, with the boundaries of the new colonies often bearing no relationship to the realities of geography or to the political and social organization of the indigenous population. In the northwest and west, France ultimately acquired regions that came to be known as French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, and the French Cameroons, and established protectorates in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Other French territory were French Somaliland, French Togoland, Madagascar, and Reunion. Main group of British possessions was in East and South Africa; it included the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, British Somaliland, Uganda, Kenya,Tanganyika (after World War I),Zanzibar, Nyasaland, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland. Following Britain's victory in the South African War (1899-1902), its South African possessions (Transvaal, Orange Free State, Cape Colony, and Natal) became a dominion within the British Empire. Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria were British possessions on the west coast. Portugal's African empire was made up of Portuguese Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique, in addition to various enclaves and islands on the west coast. Belgium held the Belgian Congo and, after World War I, Ruanda-Urundi. The Spanish possessions in Africa were the smallest, being composed of Spanish Guinea, Spanish Sahara, Ifni, and the protectorate of Spanish Morocco. The extensive German holdings—Togoland, the Cameroons, German South-West Africa, and German East Africa—were lost after World War I and redistributed among the Allies; Italy's empire included Libya, Eritrea, and Italian Somaliland. The Union of South Africa was formed and became virtually self-governing in 1910, Egypt achieved a measure of sovereignty in 1922, and in 1925 Tangier, previously attached to Morocco, was made an international zone. At the end of World War II a rise in international trade spurred renewed exploitation of Africa's resources. France and Britain began campaigns to improve conditions in their African holdings, including access to education and investment in infrastructure. Africans were also able to pressure France and Britain into a degree of self-administration. Belgium and Portugal did little in the way of colonial development and sought greater control over their colonies during this period. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the face of rising nationalism, most of the European powers granted independence to their territories. The sequence of change included independence for Libya in 1951; independence for Eritrea in federation with Ethiopia in 1952 (later absorbed by Ethiopia, Eritrea became fully independent in 1993); in 1956 independence for Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia and the return of Tangier to Morocco; in 1957 independence for Ghana; in 1958 independence for Guinea and the return of Spanish Morocco to Morocco. In 1960 France granted independence to Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Côte d'Ivoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Gabon, the MalagasyRepublic (now Madagascar), Mali( briefly merged in 1959-60 with Senegal as the Sudanese Republic), Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso); also newly independent in 1960 were Congo (Kinshasa)—the former Belgian Congo—and Nigeria, Somalia, and Togo. In 1961 Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) became independent, the Portuguese enclave of São João Baptista de Ajudá was seized by Dahomey, the British Cameroons were divided between Nigeria and Cameroon, and South Africa became a republic.