C Young, The African Colonial State And Comparative Perspectives Flashcards
“A state, once institutionalised…”
“A state, once institutionalised, has a formidable capacity for its own reproduction across time… nationalist revolution in Africa… retained more operational code of its defeated enemy in the post colonial polity”
According to Young why was the timing of the African independence movements so crucial?
Independence coincided with ‘a time of immense self confidence in the world at large’
1960s signalled the end of post war austerity measures as Western Europe began to recover from the Great War
What trends began to appear in the late 1960s?
Why were they not alarming?
Negative trends appeared
- the Zaire rebellions
- Nigerian civil war
- the spread of military coups
These crisis caused little concern because they were confined to the political sphere
What happened in the early years of 1970?
The major international banks turned to ‘aggressive lending to African countries’
Young describes Africa as ‘the engine of world capitalism’
How did Noe marxists interoperate the African state?
New Marxist scholarship rediscovered the African state and found it to be ‘the instrument of a uniformly avaricious dominant class’
‘The state was no longer the custodian of liberation and development but the instrument of extraction and exploitation’
What is Young’s fundamental thesis?
The character of the post colonial state in Africa stems from the authoritarian state structures they inherited from independence
What are some counter arguments to Young’s claims?
African’s were better equipped at resistance than young imagines
- I.e the kikuyu and other nationalist movements successfully fought back against colonial rule until 1930s
Young is extrapolating one peculiar colonial regime, the Belgian Congo , and extending this unique study across the whole continent of Africa
Also, there has been a thousand year reign of uninterrupted African socio political structure taught through chiefs and patriarchs of villages - problematic to think the colonial era (which was over within 100 years) could have such a profound institutional effect on the spirit and nature of governance in Africa
