ABSTRACT
Patterns of decolonization are particularly difficult to unravel because we know the endpoint: the emergence of the independent state from colonial rule. It is tempting to read the history of the period from 1945 to 1960 as the inevitable triumph of nationalism, and to see in each social movement taking place within a colony – be it of peasants, of women, of workers, or of religious groups – another piece to be integrated into the coming together of the nation. What is lost in such a reading are the ways in which different groups within colonies mobilized for concrete ends and used, as well as opposed, the institutions of the colonial state and the niches opened up in the clash of new and old structures. Whether such efforts fed into the attempts of nationalist parties to build anticolonial coalitions needs to be investigated, not assumed. In this chapter, I will show that, at the very moment that the distinct but related struggles of labour movements and parties became increasingly powerful in the mid-1950s, a direct clash emerged between the principle of class struggle and African unity.
