Africa under colonialism (1890–1980)

Fertile central highlands legally reserved for European settlers only; Africans could not own land there.

From 1915, an identity pass every African man over 16 had to carry, recording employment history, used to force people into settler labour.

Commissioner of Kenya (1900–1904) who opened the highlands to European settlement, setting the land pattern that lasted until 1963.

1944 — first African member of LegCo, but only nominated (not elected) and just one seat, showing how limited African political voice remained.

A 1905–1907 uprising against German rule in Tanganyika; crushed with scorched-earth tactics, causing up to 300,000 deaths from fighting and famine.

Germany was defeated in WWI and lost its colonies; Britain took over Tanganyika under a Mandate obliging it to prepare the territory for self-government.

A large, costly British agricultural project in Tanganyika to grow groundnuts for cooking oil; it failed due to poor planning and unsuitable soil.

Kenya: severe, due to the White Highlands and settler demand. Tanganyika: much less severe, since its climate attracted far fewer European settlers.

A union of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland pushed by Southern Rhodesian settlers, opposed by Africans in all three territories, and dissolved after the Monckton Report.

That territories should be allowed to secede from the Central African Federation, following unrest including the 1959 Nyasaland State of Emergency.

Southern Rhodesia's white-minority government broke from Britain without permission rather than accept a path to majority rule; triggered sanctions and war before Zimbabwean independence in 1980.

Widespread unrest and the Monckton Report's recommendations led Britain to let both territories secede; the Federation was dissolved in 1963, becoming independent Malawi and Zambia in 1964.

**Indirect rule** — Lugard governed through existing Emirs and their Islamic administrative structures, keeping British staff minimal and using local rulers to collect tax and enforce law.

The South (especially Igbo areas) had no single centralised chief or kingdom to rule through — society was organised in small, independent village communities, so Britain had to invent 'Warrant Chiefs', who were often resented as illegitimate outsiders.

Fear that a British tax census of women (extending direct taxation to women) was coming, on top of existing resentment of Warrant Chiefs — thousands of Igbo women protested, several were shot by colonial police.

**Northern, Western and Eastern Regions** — each with its own government and a dominant ethnic group (Hausa-Fulani north, Yoruba west, Igbo east), setting up long-term regional rivalry.

**Kwame Nkrumah** and the **Convention People's Party (CPP)**, founded 1949, using the slogan 'Self-Government Now' and tactics of 'Positive Action' (strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience).

The **Accra riots (1948)**, triggered when police shot ex-servicemen marching to petition the governor over pensions and high prices — the Watson Commission that followed recommended constitutional reform.

**1957** — Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African colony to gain independence, becoming a model and inspiration for nationalist movements elsewhere on the continent.

**Assimilation** — France treated Senegal's four communes (including Dakar and St Louis) as an extension of France itself, giving some African residents French citizenship and representation in the French parliament.

**Léopold Sédar Senghor**, poet and founder of the concept of **Négritude** (pride in African culture and identity) — he became Senegal's first president, initially favouring a federation with other French West African states.

Indirect rule (Nigeria) preserved local rulers and traditions as a cheap layer of control, while assimilation (Senegal) tried to make African subjects into French citizens who adopted French culture and law.

Rising cost of controlling nationalist unrest, the example of India's 1947 independence, UN pressure on colonial powers, and the economic burden of empire after the Second World War.

Ghana (1957) became independent as a **unitary state** under one strong nationalist party (CPP); Nigeria (1960) became independent as a **federation of three regions**, each dominated by a different ethnic group — a structure that stored up future conflict.