ABSTRACT
The end of colonialism meant the departure of foreign administrators and armies and the establishment of an internal government with its own army. It did not always mean changes in the economic realities on the ground; often independence was intentionally meant not to change those realities. If a colony had a large number of landless people before independence, it still had them afterward. If it had an economy dependent on primary production (producing raw materials rather than manufactured goods), it still had such an economy afterward. And if non-local or non-indigenous individuals or corporations owned and controlled resources and wealth before independence, they still did afterward. In fact, because political independence was a change of relations between governments (new state and former colonizer) and not necessarily between individuals or classes or businesses, it often could not address those other issues, at least not initially.
