The Diplomacy of Theodore Brown and the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War. Keith A. Dye
Council on African Affairs, among others, also tried to confront colonialism at the United Nations. Although the results of the efforts of these groups were meager at best, the broader picture would have it that the pace of colonial change had quickened in an era of empire decline.28
The command of the Allied powers to orchestrate final surrender of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and the Japanese empire, and in restructuring the international order, perhaps impressed Africans in their drive toward liberation. It seems more than coincidence that in October 1945 Africans and African descendants convened the Fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester, England, following major summits of the Western powers.29 Continent-born Africans at this fifth PAC then declared—reminiscent of the display of power by the allied nations—that they and not African descendants would lead the proceedings and subsequent pan-African affairs while continuing to recognize the necessary roles and participation of African Americans and other peoples of the centuries-old African dispersal. Kwame Nkrumah, a decade or so away from becoming the first president of a soon-to-be independent Ghana, was the chief proponent of this idea and supported by other Africans. Coincidently, scholar and activist Dubois was one of only two African Americans in attendance at that fifth congress out of two hundred attendees, unlike the previous gatherings. Africans from Nigeria and Ghana (then the Gold Coast), along with Ethiopia, Egypt, and Liberia, subsequently would assume leadership positions in campaigns with other Africans for self-rule or outright independence.30
This entry of African nationalism into a new post-war phase was significant. African-born spokespersons—and Nigeria and Ghana were uppermost—now ascended onto the larger stage to advocate the pan-African cause from the stronger position of anticipated sovereign ←30 | 31→states, as opposed to persons (racial minorities) originating from a Western country leading the way.31 The roles assumed by African Americans and Africans in previous pan-African affairs had now rotated, settling upon a new leadership more fitted for an era represented by the 1945 congress. African nationalism rose in tandem with pan-Africanism. The conference ended with a sense of fulfillment, with the potential for success just on the horizon. No longer reformist or predominantly so, the thinking of Africans in attendance reflected a mood of upheaval characteristic of the time, “on a note of insurgency,” as one author stated. Delegates endorsed reciprocal tactics to achieve freedom if “the Western world is still determined to rule mankind by force.”32
The case of Nigeria had become troublesome for the British during the war. Lacking rhyme or reason, colonial Nigeria’s always inchoate political union was an indirect rule, leaving open the unintended opportunity for African resistance to oppression. Circumstances were quite manageable up through the 1930s, but war and anti-colonial agitation in other parts of the world particularly India had begun to shake British power. The British would not voluntarily withdraw from the territory they named “Nigeria” for the river coursing through its lands; that was neither the nature of empire nor what they considered their manifest destiny. After all, British ways would civilize the world if only subject peoples would demonstrate their appreciation. This same imperial attitude, moreover, had been directed against the German state during World War II in an attempt to force capitulation to war-ending demands by the British. Nigerians had to contend with double humiliation in a struggle with metropole requirements and local British administration demands for cooperation to make the colonial system work, and to combat the German menace. This was an economic battle as much as political, with London marshalling its domestic and colonial resources, including key Nigeria, to “strangle German trade as a war measure.”33 Exports of cocoa, rice, palm kernels, and other crops to Germany were halted and redirected to British markets and troops. This was a move reminiscent of the British navigation acts of the eighteenth century, an economic control measure against American colonists in the expanding wars for empire among Europeans. Nigerians had no clout to change ←31 | 32→the British policy, and thus it seems difficult to characterize them as having willingly contributed to the war effort.34
Indigenous Nigeria’s inability to determine their role in the war was one indignity, and wartime inflation in 1941 would compound this problem. The result was a means of resistance familiar to both metropole and Brits in Nigeria. Now Nigerians both moderate and radical resorted to vigorous activism to assert their cause. These measures were similar to, but uncoordinated with, African American protests during the same year for entry into the American armed forces free of racially discriminatory practices. Labor leader A. Philip Randolph, who would later co-found the ANLCA, led this effort. Though the objective of the Nigerian protests was different (though perhaps only by a matter of degree) than that of the African American protests, the tactics were the same. Nigerians resorted to strikes, walk-outs, sit-downs, marches, and other means of protest in an attempt to slacken hardships inflicted upon them in their own land, including being forced to limit their food consumption while producing more for British troops, and to increase production of raw materials. Nigerian railway and dock workers would join those means of protest especially when precipitated by strains on the transportation system, an interior-to-coast distribution network. Those workers had been forced to work overtime to extract minerals from the soil for the war effort that were then transported on cargo rail cars to the coast. Native African protests against tightening controls and meager compensation continued up to and after the war, differing in intensity but indicating a clear pattern of opposition.35
Wartime relations between the United States and colonial administrators in Nigeria offered little respite for Great Britain. This, too, weakened British power in Nigeria, inadvertently giving rise to aggressive Nigerian campaigns for relief from oppression. Nigerians and British business persons resident in Nigeria increasingly demanded more trade relations with the United States. Great Britain, however, was careful not to allow a trade deficit with its overseas ally to occur. The mother country resisted demands to relax stringent import/export trade policies, thereby helping to further spur African resistance.36
Yet a devastated, war-torn Europe eroded the sense that continuing the British Empire in toto was possible. Great Britain at first thought ←32 | 33→otherwise and instituted a mix of labor concessions and repression against unions and select individuals. Popular labor leader Michael Imoudo was detained. These measures and the general colonial policies of ongoing subservience had minimal results and ultimately produced a rising rebelliousness among Nigerians. Though somewhat temporary, these actions by the British “influenced the course of African nationalism, however indirectly.” Such empire-driven policies meant the war had taken a toll on Great Britain, a circumstance not helped by similar rebelliousness in other parts of what would become known as the third world. Containing the activisms and fighting a war was the cost of empire. The talk of the day increasingly was of a transfer of power. African American activists took a noticeable interest in this new development.37
The reforms that would lead to self-government and eventually independence began to take shape due to several factors that accelerated the process. One study about the concessionary attitude of the British to end their colonial arrangement noted rather critically that the British had always intended to prepare its subject peoples for self-rule “after a period of tutelage since colonial rule itself was a burdensome duty undertaken by the imperial powers.”38 The tone of this benevolent reasoning by Great Britain implied that the colonial enterprise was inherently collapsible, but obtaining the most from it was preferred in the meantime. A second causation was the fact that the United States applied pressure on colonial powers to relinquish their territories or at least embark upon significant reforms. In addition, a liberal attitude toward colonial subjects by British citizens encouraged a lessening of rigid controls. Lastly, mounting opposition by colonial subjects would help force an end to empire.39
Whether separate or in combination, all of these pressures prevented the British government from avoiding the inevitable. It took the Local Government Dispatch of February 1947, however, to formally launch reforms. In this measure Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones suggested Great Britain prepares an educated African elite to assume the reigns of government rather than traditional leaders at the local level. Rebellions in Accra, Ghana, a year later forced implementation of the act. Sir John Macpherson was installed as governor of Nigeria, and ←33 | 34→his liberal inclinations enabled him to advance the move to self-government. Macpherson was able to win some measure of trust