Post-1960s: (Part VI — Legacies, New Beginnings, and Unfinished Business: The End of Colonial Rule Bringing Continuations of Old Problems, the Militarization…

Post-1960s: (Part VI — Legacies, New Beginnings, and Unfinished Business: The End of Colonial Rule Bringing Continuations of Old Problems, the Militarization of the Nineteenth Century Resurfacing, the Cold War Exacerbating Conflicts and Justifying Support for Odious Regimes, Economic Underdevelopment Rooted in the Atlantic Slave Trade and Legitimate Commerce, Patronage and Personal Rule Drawing on Pre-Colonial Experience, and Africa Still Objectified as a Condition to Be Improved Rather Than Understood): The end of colonial rule brought some new problems and continuations of old ones. African states carried the legacy of foreign rule in politics, economics, cultures, and social structures, while patterns of social and political relations that had receded under colonial rule now re-emerged — many contemporary challenges are pre-colonial in origin, particularly the effects of nineteenth-century political transformations and the militarization of polity and society. The Cold War was crippling, exacerbating or creating conflicts and leading the West to support some of the most odious regimes the planet has witnessed. Economic underdevelopment was rooted in the inequities of nineteenth-century legitimate commerce and even earlier in the Atlantic slave-trading system, further compounded by colonial economics. Colonialism bequeathed systems based on militarism and violence, oppression and unaccountability, and African rulers soon developed their own variations — patronage and personal rule predominating in ways that drew upon pre-colonial experience while sometimes warping pre-colonial paradigms. The continent remains objectified by the developed world — Africa, as when abolitionists made their case in the late eighteenth century, is treated as a condition to be addressed though not necessarily understood. The late twentieth century witnessed a return to Enlightenment-era values of improvement and salvation. Yet the history of Africa over the past two centuries is characterized by extraordinary dynamism and creativity, and this alone suggests that further innovation and development — driven by Africans themselves — is not simply possible but inevitable. The ambiguity of the contemporary era is perhaps best symbolized by 1994: the year that witnessed both the democratic birth of the rainbow nation in South Africa and the horrific genocide in Rwanda. The story continues.