WORLD CIVILIZATION 2 ASSIGNMENT 1

Q1. Discuss the factors that contributed to decolonization of Africa and Asia.
Africa
The loss of independence to foreigners and the introduction of foreign systems of government
caused feelings of resistance among rulers and people of Africa. Therefore foreign control
caused feelings of nationalism.
There were also unfair colonial policies. Colonial economic policies such as taxation, forced
labor and compulsory growing of crops caused discontent among Africans. The suffering of
Africans which was also expressed in form of armed resistance in many countries marked the
growth of African nationalism.
The settlement of large numbers of European settlers in different parts of Africa caused growth
of African Nationalism. Large numbers of Africans were displaced from fertile lands in Kenya,
Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and many other countries. This caused destruction of African
culture, poverty, hunger and other forms of suffering. It also exposed Africans to segregation.
This caused the need to fight for political freedom and self-determination.
The emergence of the new super powers, that is, USA and Soviet Union, replaced Britain, France
and Germany which had failed to protect world peace. The new powers wanted to be free to
pursue their trading interest in Africas most wanted to spread the ideology of capitalism. Also
Russia, wanted to spread communism. They therefore put pressure on colonial powers to
decolonize. In addition they provided support to liberation movements for example, scholarships
for education. They also used their influence in the UN to call for independence of African
colonies this encouraged the growth of nationalist movements.
Improved transport network and urbanization brought by colonialists led to concentration of
population in mining centers, cash crops growing and processing areas and port cities. This in
turn caused urbanization. Many people from different ethnic groups migrated to the towns
sharing their experiences under white rule. They suffered the same problems of racial
discrimination, unemployment and poor living conditions. People later decided to unite and fight
for independence.
Colonial education contributed to the rise of African freedom. As a result the colonial education
an elite African group with anti-colonial sentiments emerged. They played a decisive role in the
mobilization of their people for political independence. They included Nkwame Nkrumah of
Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Modibo Keita of Mali, Mamadou Dia (First prime minister of
Senegal), among others.

The press played a major role especially the emergence of newspapers after the World War 2
brought about by the educated African elite. The elite used these newspapers to expose colonial
exploitation and to mobilize the people for the nationalist struggle.
The influence of decolonization in Asia also played a big role in the growth of African
nationalism. The independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 encouraged Africans also to
struggle for political independence. Of particular importance was Mahatma Gandhis strategy of
no-violence. This was borrowed by Nkrumah who called it positive action. It involved political
campaigns, education, newspapers, boycotts and strikes. African nationalists decided to use this
strategy, hence promoting nationalism.

Asia
During the World War 1, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (28 th President of the United States) in his
Fourteen points was the Principle of Self-determination of the people. This encouragement lead
to the independence of some countries such as Poland. The principle was embraced by Asians
with nationalistic and patriotic feelings which later, so the Asians fight for their independence of
their countries after World War 2.
The increased protests by militant nationalists such as B.G. Tilak who urged a boycott of British
manufactured goods and used threats of terrorism so Asian countries desire for democratic rule
rather than the Western imperialism.
The Second World War weakened Western imperialism and inaugurated an era of decolonization.
After World War II it became impossible for the European powers to cling to their empires. This
was seen as a triumph of nationalism from the point of view of the Afro-Asian countries.
Japans initial victories in South East Asia exploded the myth of Western supremacy. A dwarf
Asiatic nation like Japan managed to disrupt the Western domination over indo-China, Burma,
Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines all in the name of "Asia for the Asians". This Japanese
wartime slogan produced a tremendous impact on the Asian colonies which soon began to burn
with the fire of revolution.
During World War II, the "natives" of Asia, came into contact with Western culture and
technology. Most Asian intellectuals realized the vast gulf of differences between their own
people and the Westerners. They resolved to lead the kind of life led by the Western men, for
which national independence was an essential pre-requisite.

The Labor Party in Britain became a strong enemy of imperialism and was anxious to pursue the
course of decolonization. Similar movements began to occur in France and other European
countries. This quickened the process of decolonization.

The Soviet propaganda was another factor. The persistent and militant demands of the subject
people for national independence were fully backed and used by the Soviet Union to create
trouble for its Western rivals in the "Cold War". The Soviet propaganda and Soviet arms were
responsible for the triumph of communism in China, North Korea and North Vietnam.
National wide protests against colonialism through boycotts and campaigns of civil resistance
lead by Mohandas Gandhi and other western educated lawyers led peaceful alternative.
Mohandas Gandhi led the Salt March (from March to April 1930 in India) and passing of the
Government of Indian act-1935 was in protest of British rule in India.
Literature was essential in the end of colonialism through expressions of nationalism and
rejections of Western superiority. For example Gandhi wrote I make bold to say that the
Europeans themselves will have to remodel their outlooks if they are not to perish under the
weight of the comforts to which they are becoming slaves. And similarly Aime Cesaire, West
Indian poet, founder of Negritude wrote on the Return to my Native Land.

Q2. Discuss apartheid in South Africa.

The region of the Western Cape which includes the Table Bay area (where the modern city of
Cape Town is located) was inhabited by Khoikhoi pastoralists who used it seasonally as pastures
for their cattle. When European ships landed on the shores of Table Bay they came into contact
with Khoikhoi. In the summer months the Khoikhoi moved around between the areas of Table
Bay, Swartland and Saldanha Bay in search of fresh grazing pastures with their cattle herds. It
was the gradual dispossession of local Khoikhoi pastoralists by early Dutch settlers that opened
up the area for European settlement.
Cape Town was founded by the Dutch East India Company or the Vereenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie (VOC) in 1652 as a refreshment outpost. The outpost was intended to supply VOC
ships on their way to Asia with fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and to enable sailors wearied by the
sea to recuperate. What influenced the location of the town in the Table Bay area was the
availability of fresh water which was difficult to find in other areas.
(Thompson, 2001) Says that The Dutch East India Company established a small settlement at
what is now Cape Town in 1652. The initial purpose of the settlement was to provide a rest stop

and supply station for trading vessels making the long journey from Europe, around the cape of
southern Africa, and on to India and other points eastward. Slavery (of Africans, but also of some
Asians) was a feature of the new colony almost from day one, as was the process of subjugating
the local indigenous population. Academic historians commonly refer to the events of the 17th
century and 18th century in South Africa as the white invasion or conquest. The first violent
conflicts between the Dutch community and natives dates from 1659; over the next 50 years, the
settlers took advantage of superior weaponry to gradually gain control of more land and more
resources (livestock) formerly controlled or occupied by native Africans. A devastating small pox
outbreak in the late 17th century further decimated the Khoikhoi ("Hottentot") native population.
(Thompson, 2001) Notes of the significant for South Africas subsequent history is the fact that
the white colonial settlement had sharp gradations of status and wealth, as historian Leonard
Thompson puts it. Colony administrators and a few wealthy farmers controlled land and
resources, but many other white settlers were landless. This was the strata from which the first
trekkers emergedthose white colonialists who over the course of the 18th century branched
out from the Cape Town base and began expanding white presence in southern Africa, to the
north and the east.
(Thompson, 2001) The trekkers had only limited contact with Dutch colonial culture during this
process. Government beyond the Cape Town region was extremely limited, and the trekkers in
effect made their own laws, particularly in dealing with native Africans. Over much of the 18th
century, there were no formal schools for these settlers, and little organized religion; contact with
the home colony base consisted of long, arduous trade trips. These colonialists of Dutch descent
had an increasingly marginal relationship with Cape Town, much less Holland itself and the
intellectual and political developments of 18th-century Europe.
Many trekkers owned slaves, and the trekkers formed commando units for military defense
and aggressionagainst native Africans. Periodic warfare with the Xhosa was a fact of life in the
late 18th century, and the trekkers believed they received inadequate support from Cape Town. It
was common practice among the trekkers to kill all adults in conflicts with hunter-gatherers and
other natives, while keeping the children to use as laborers. This is not to say that the trekkers
lived luxuriously, in the style of 19th-century plantation owners in the American Southindeed,
they were almost all simply eking out a subsistence existence.
(Worden, 2007) Writes that back in Cape Town, a slave society continued to developalmost
two-thirds of Cape Town residents in 1795 were slaves. Thompson and other historians judge
slavery in the Cape in this period to be more brutal than that prevailing in North America at the
time.
(Worden, 2007) Says that these events were probably almost entirely unknown to leaders in
Holland in the late 18th century, let alone the average Dutch personalthough they were in
many ways a predictable consequence of both the colonial impulse and the European ideologies

of racism then prevailing. But unlike in the case of the American colonies and England, the Cape
settlement was not a major political topic or concern for Holland over this time period. Most
Europeans still regarded the settlement as a pit stop. Indeed, it is estimated that by 1793, the
colony as a whole (including trekkers) totaled just 15,000 whites.
(Worden, 2007) In 1795, England took control of the colony for the first time, a move made
permanent in 1806. English settlers in substantial numbers first entered South African in 1820s
as part of a government program to relieve poverty at home. British colonial rule was often just
as brutal towards native Africans as the Dutch had been, especially in military conflicts. But
humanitarian pressure and changing views on slavery led to legislation establishing legal rights
and equality before the law for the Khoikhoi in the Cape colony in 1828, with all slaves to be
fully freed by 1838.
These changes were not well-received by the Dutch-speaking colonists, who were also
disappointed at Britain's refusal to annex more land and what they felt was a low rate of
compensation paid to former slave owners.
(Thompson, 2001) Resentment against English rule led some colonists of Dutch descent to
embark on the "Great Trek" of the 1820s and 1830sa sustained effort, much larger in scale
than the 18th-century trek, to achieve both white control over African land and autonomy from
the English. In this process, the trekkers began forging a new, distinct national and cultural
identity, distinct from the Dutch and in opposition both to indigenous Africans and the English
Afrikaner nationalism. The building blocks of this identity were a new and distinct language
(Afrikaans) and much myth-making regarding the exploits of the trekkers. Central among those
exploits were brutal battles with the Zulus and other groups, such as an 1838 battle that killed
3,000 Zulus in a single day.
The original trekkers had set out with the stated aim of preserving "proper relations between
master and servant." As Thompson puts it, the aim was to "recreate the social and economic
structure of the Cape colony," one based on the subordination of nonwhites as laborers for
whites. The Afrikaners succeeded in this aim. When the discovery of diamonds and gold in the
southern African interior in the late 19th century began transforming the country economically,
the system of racial segregation was well-entrenched, and the mines were organized on the same
principle. Native Africans were recruited to work in the mines at low pay, segregated from
whites and separated from women, and subjected to body parts searches to prevent any theft of
diamonds.
Ongoing conflict between the English and the Afrikaners in the region led to the South African
War (Boer War) at the end of the turn of the 20th century. Suffice it to say that while the British
succeeded in their aims of establishing unitary rule through southern Africa, they did not come
close to succeeding in the stated goal of destroying Afrikaner nationalismindeed, the war
strengthened Afrikaner ethnic identity. The constitution sent to Parliament (and there approved)

establishing modern South Africa in 1910 enshrined racial distinctions, and paved the way for
white rule in governments predominated by Afrikaner leaders.
There is a direct historic continuity between the original Dutch settlements and the emergence of
an Afrikaner national identity predicated on racial domination, and the subsequent adoption of
the policies and ideologies of Apartheid.

By 1950, the government had banned marriages between whites and people of other races, and
prohibited sexual relations between black and white South Africans. The Population Registration
Act of 1950 provided the basic framework for apartheid by classifying all South Africans by
race, including Bantu (black Africans), Colored (mixed race) and white. A fourth category, Asian
(meaning Indian and Pakistani) was later added. In some cases, the legislation split families;
parents could be classified as white, while their children were classified as colored.
A series of Land Acts set aside more than 80 percent of the countrys land for the white minority,
and pass laws required non-whites to carry documents authorizing their presence in restricted
areas. In order to limit contact between the races, the government established separate public
facilities for whites and non-whites, limited the activity of nonwhite labor unions and denied
non-white participation in national government.

REFERENCES
Maylam, P. (1995). Explaining the apartheid city: 20 years of South African urban
historiography. Journal of Southern African Studies, 21(1), 19-38.
Maylam, P. (1990). The rise and decline of urban apartheid in South Africa. African Affairs, 5784.
Robinson, J. (1992). Power, space and the city: historical reflections on apartheid and postapartheid urban orders. The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in
South Africa, London: Routledge, 292-302.
BickfordSmith, V. (1995). South African urban history, racial segregation and the unique case of
Cape Town? Journal of Southern African Studies, 21(1), 63-78.
Thompson, L. (2001). A History of South Africa. Yale.
Worden, N. (2007). The Making of Modern South Africa. Blackwell.