1939–1950s: (The Beached Whale — Colonial Rule Seeming Impregnable in 1939 Yet Collapsing Within Twenty Years, Europe Scrambling Out of Africa in the Same Pe…

1939–1950s: (The Beached Whale — Colonial Rule Seeming Impregnable in 1939 Yet Collapsing Within Twenty Years, Europe Scrambling Out of Africa in the Same Period It Had Scrambled In, Decolonization Driven by Both External and Internal Dynamics, and the Immediate Postwar Crystallization of Anti-Colonial Grievances into Organized Political Parties): In September 1939, as Britain and France went to war with Germany, colonial rule had seemed impregnable. There had been challenges — political movements foreshadowing modern nationalism, rural protest, urban workers’ organizations, Islamic and Christian movements rejecting colonial assumptions, and an increasingly aggressive African voice — yet nothing had threatened to completely overthrow the system, and no European power had given serious thought to retreating from its African empire. Nonetheless, within twenty years all had changed. By the late 1950s, Britain and France had initiated irreversible programs of decolonization and Belgium was teetering on the brink — only Portugal and white settler regimes like Southern Rhodesia and South Africa remained intransigent, with devastating consequences. Just as Europe had scrambled into Africa, it would scramble out, in more or less the same period of time. Decolonization would be driven by both external factors — European domestic and foreign policy considerations — and internal dynamics, namely the activities of African political movements and the changing realities they created on the ground. The widespread disillusionment, the myriad associations that had emerged around anti-colonial grievances, and the heightened political consciousness fostered by the Depression and the war crystallized after 1945, facilitating the development of broader-based and better-organized political parties mounting a more serious challenge to colonial power.