1945–1960s: (The Dissolution of Empire — An Overview of Decolonization’s Multiple Paths: Violence in Kenya, Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau, B…

1945–1960s: (The Dissolution of Empire — An Overview of Decolonization’s Multiple Paths: Violence in Kenya, Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau, Byzantine Negotiations Elsewhere, the 1956 Suez Debacle as the Final Throw of Imperial High-Handedness, White Settler Entrenchment in South Africa and Rhodesia, and Decolonization as Rushed and Unplanned as the Original Partition): Belgium and Portugal would ultimately lose control of events as violence erupted in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and the Congo, while Britain and France were also shaken by violence in Kenya and Algeria respectively — territories where large European settler minorities drove confrontation. The French conceded defeat to Algerian rebels directly, while the British crushed the Mau Mau insurgents before handing power to a moderate elite. Elsewhere, largely peaceable if Byzantine negotiations led to constitutional transfers of power across much of sub-Saharan Anglophone and Francophone Africa. Late-nineteenth-century imperial high-handedness had a final throw in Egypt in 1956 when British and French troops invaded the Suez Canal zone in response to Nasser’s nationalization — but in the face of international condemnation they were forced into sharp and humiliating retreat. White settler regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia became entrenched, oblivious to any winds of change, creating political and cultural frameworks within which the likelihood of violence increased dramatically. The conflicts between ethnic, regional, and religious groupings were frequently continuations of nineteenth-century struggles sharpened by colonial rule, which had added new elements to the competition — not least the provision of a national space within which such competition was now to be played out. The generation that would lead Africa to independence achieved much in terms of political creativity, but the problems confronting them were immense: they were operating in unfamiliar territory thrust upon them by colonial rule, and the tensions they inherited represented unfinished business from the pre-colonial era. Decolonization was, arguably, as rushed and unplanned as had been the original partition of the continent.