A History of Nationalist Struggle in Africa within the Context of the Bolshevik Revolution
Ibrahim Danmaraya
Department of History
Faculty of Arts
Kaduna State University Kaduna, Nigeria
Email: danmaraya77@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
The colonization of Africa formally established after the 1884-1885 Berlin conference was an action which received counter reaction from Africans. At the beginning, colonialism received a hostile welcome from Africans as different independent African territories staged defensives against European subjugation. Although Africans were later overpowered as a result of the superiority of the European weapons, they never forgot their identity that make them Africans and by extension, “Blacks”. They exhibited strong and admirable nationalist movement to air their voice and gradually agitated for self-determination. African intellectuals, the pioneers of this agitation operated as a movement guided by their commonality in promoting the concepts of “Ethiopianism”, Pan-Africanism and cultural nationalism. As events unfolded, radical nationalists formed nationalist movements and took the responsibility of nationalism from the intellectuals. Inspired by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the efforts of cultural nationalists, and being intellectuals in their different capacities, they agitated for outright independence of Africa. In view of the forgoing, the paper examines the history of nationalist struggles in Africa with regards to the activities of cultural and radical nationalists by establishing that the eventual independence of African states from the 1950s to the 1980s achieved through radical nationalism with socialist and communist ideological inputs took its root from the efforts of cultural nationalists.
