Abstract
In the early fifties, the European colonial empires in Africa were still intact. A decade later, decolonisation in Africa appeared irreversible and coloured the times. This was the beginning of the years of the ‘wind of change’, a period in which the European colonial empires became increasingly unstuck. In Britain, newspaper cartoons depicted African nationalism as a giant ocean wave towering above the human defenders of empire—settlers and colonial officials—dithering on beaches, or as water bursting through hard, fortified constructions such as walls and dams. A little later, small babies and jungle animals denoted the first leaders of independent African states, while white settlers in the south of the continent in areas still under colonial rule were pictured running around with truncheons and whips, lashing at African people madly and mercilessly. Throughout it all, Britain appeared at once in the form of a tired, bemused, crest-fallen prime minister and as a ray of light and justice. This book is the story of the role which British newspaper coverage of Africa, including these images, played in the history it is often assumed merely to have described. It takes us through Ghana, Kenya, Nyasaland (Malawi), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), South Africa and the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), examining developments which included resistance, independence, colonial violence and neo-colonialism.
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- 1.
For these political developments, see: Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002); and Robert D. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa: British Colonial Policy, 1938–1948 (London, 1982).
- 2.
Marc Matera, Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Oakland, US, 2015).
- 3.
Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London, 2005); Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962 (New York, 2006).
- 4.
Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009).
- 5.
Three very helpful books which concern Britain’s relations with the Federation are: Colin Baker, State of Emergency: Crisis in Central Africa, Nyasaland 1959–60 (London, 1996); Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918–1968 (Cambridge, 2006); and John McCracken, A History of Malawi: 1859–1966 (Woodbridge, 2012).
- 6.
Cooper, Africa since 1940.
- 7.
Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower (London, 2009).
- 8.
Andre Gunder Frank, ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’, Monthly Review (1974).
- 9.
Books which trace these changes within the context of the different papers’ histories include: Peter Catterall, Colin Seymour-Ure and Adrian Smith (eds.), Northcliffe’s Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896–1996 (Basingstoke, 2000); Richard Cockett, David Astor and the Observer (London, 1991); Jeremy Lewis, David Astor: A Life in Print (London, 2017); Maurice Edelman, The Mirror: A Political History (London, 1966); Bill Hagerty, Read All About It! 100 Sensational Years of the Daily Mirror (Lydney, Gloucestershire, 2003); Duff Hart-Davis, The House the Berrys Built (London, 1990); Iverach McDonald, The History of The Times, Volume V: Struggles in War and Peace 1939–1966 (London, 1984); Huw Richards, The Bloody Circus: The Daily Herald and the Left (London, 1997); and Geoffrey Taylor, Changing Faces: A History of the Guardian, 1956–88 (London, 1993). Broader histories include: James Thomas, Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics (London, 2005); Colin Seymour-Ure, The Press, Politics and the Public: An Essay on the Role of the National Press in the British Political System (London, 1968); and A. C. H. Smith, Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change 1935–1965 (London, 1975).
- 10.
Susan Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insurgency, 1944–1960 (London, 1995).
- 11.
Tony Shaw, Eden, Suez, and the Mass Media: Propaganda and Persuasion during the Suez Crisis (London, 1996).
- 12.
Joanna Lewis and Philip Murphy, ‘“The Old Pals’ Protection Society”? The Colonial Office and the British Press on the Eve of Decolonisation’ in Chandrika Kaul (ed.), Media and the British Empire (Manchester, 2006), pp. 55–69.
- 13.
Joanna Lewis, ‘“Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Mau Mau”: The British Popular Press and the Demoralization of Empire’ in E.S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale (eds.), Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority, Narration (Oxford, 2003), pp. 227–50.
- 14.
Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke, 2006).
- 15.
Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good, 1956–63: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London, 2005).
- 16.
Ibid., p. 302.
- 17.
Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford, 1993); Nicholas Owen, ‘Critics of Empire in Britain’ in A.N. Porter (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 4: The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 188–211.
- 18.
David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961: From ‘Colonial Development’ to ‘Wind of Change’ (Oxford, 1971).
- 19.
Ibid., p. 382.
- 20.
Stuart Ward, ‘Introduction’ in Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester, 2001), pp. 1–20; Bill Schwarz, Memories of Empire, Volume 1: The White Man’s World (Oxford, 2011); Bill Schwarz, ‘“The Only White Man in There”: The Re-racialisation of England, 1956–1968’, Race and Class, 38: 1 (1996); Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire, 1939–65 (Oxford, 2005); Wendy Webster, ‘“There’ll Always be an England”: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948–1968’, Journal of British Studies, 40: 4 (2001), pp. 557–84.
- 21.
John Darwin, ‘The Fear of Falling: British Politics and Imperial Decline Since 1900’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5: 36 (1986), pp. 27–43.
- 22.
Lewis, ‘“Daddy Wouldn’t”’.
- 23.
Stephen Howe, ‘Internal Decolonization? British Politics Since Thatcher as Post-colonial Trauma’, Twentieth Century British History, 14: 3 (2003), pp. 286–304.
- 24.
Jordanna Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire (London, 2012); Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge, 2013); Elizabeth Buettner, Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge, 2016); Sarah Stockwell, The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2018); Anna Bocking-Welch, British Civic Society at the End of Empire: Decolonisation, Globalisation, and International Responsibility (Manchester, 2018).
- 25.
Bailkin, Afterlife.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Schofield, Enoch Powell.
- 28.
Buettner, Europe after Empire.
- 29.
Stockwell, British End.
- 30.
Bocking-Welch, British Civic Society.
- 31.
The Daily Express, The Daily Herald, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, The Manchester Guardian/The Guardian, The News Chronicle, The Observer, The Times, and, occasionally, The Daily Sketch.
- 32.
Kathryn Tidrick, Empire and the English Character: The Illusion of Authority (London, 1990); Ronald Hyam, Understanding the British Empire (Cambridge, 2010).
- 33.
Observer, 17 April 1960, p. 8.
- 34.
A term coined by Dane Kennedy. Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, North Carolina, USA, 1987).
- 35.
Donal Lowry, ‘“Shame Upon ‘Little England’ While ‘Greater England’ Stands!” Southern Rhodesia and the Imperial Idea’ in Andrea Bosco and Alex May (eds.), Round Table: The Empire/Commonwealth and British Foreign Policy (London, 1997), pp. 305–41; Schwarz, White Man’s World; Stuart Ward, ‘Whirlwind, Hurricane, Howling Tempest: The Wind of Change and the British World’ in L.J. Butler and Sarah Stockwell (eds.), The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 48–69.
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Coffey, R. (2022). Introduction. In: The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_1
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