Post-1945: (Conceiving and Producing Nations — Nationalism as a Problematic Term in the African Context, Colonial Territories as Wholly Artificial Units Lack…

Post-1945: (Conceiving and Producing Nations — Nationalism as a Problematic Term in the African Context, Colonial Territories as Wholly Artificial Units Lacking Ethnic and Linguistic Logic, Anti-Colonial Protest Frequently Mistaken for Nationalism, Nineteenth-Century Dominant Polities Pursuing Their Own Agendas Within the Broader Struggle, and the Challenge of Building Viable Nation-States from Geographical Expressions): Nationalism and nation are often problematic terms in the African context. Most territories had to make the difficult and often violent transition from colonial administrative unit to nation-state in a remarkably short time — in many cases, that transition is not yet complete. It is not always easy to identify the point at which anti-colonial protest became nationalism; avowedly nationalist movements were often actually concerned to protect particular regional or group interests, as much focused on the shape of the territory after the colonial departure as on the expulsion of the colonizer. The search for nationalism — in the sense of shared consciousness within colonial boundaries — is often a red herring, involving European models of territorial nationalism as measurements when in fact colonial territories were wholly artificial geographical units lacking ethnic and linguistic logic as well as deeper historical roots. Nationalism in the African context frequently meant heightened struggles between emergent or preexisting groups — ethnic, religious, regional, socioeconomic — some rivalries engendered by colonial rule, others of much longer standing. Nineteenth-century dominant polities often pursued their own agendas within the broader anti-colonial struggle, seeking ascendancy or even autonomy from it. The challenge for a new generation of postwar leaders was to harness the groundswell of anti-colonial protest — political associations, trade unionism, militant Christianity and Islam, négritude, pan-Africanism — and mobilize wider constituencies across colonial territories to build viable movements capable of forcing decolonization and then governing the nation-states that would follow.