ABSTRACT

One of the earliest links between the USA and African nationalism is the link of American education. The most important fact is the economic support for the Republic of South Africa. American investment in South Africa has been the largest single American economic commitment within Africa south of the Sahara. If the most dramatic American support for South Africa has been economic in nature, the most dramatic American support for Portugal until 1974 was, either directly or indirectly, military. In the Rhodesian case the moral support came by a cool calculated decision of the United States Senate to go back on its own treaty obligation concerning sanctions on Rhodesia, and to buy chrome from the rebel British colony. In the African continent neither the revolutionary nor the law enforcement traditions of America have so far been especially active, as compared with the tumultuous experiments in Latin America and South-east Asia.