ABSTRACT
The basin of the Congo in Central Africa was 'awarded' to King Leopold of Belgium, while England received a huge swath of East Africa stretching from Cairo to Cape Town. But the nationalism that led the European countries to become imperial powers also took root on the African continent, especially after World War I. At the insistence of Woodrow Wilson, national identity was used to redraw the boundaries of Europe at the Versailles Peace Conference, and was at the center of the vision for the League of Nations. African people who had been colonial 'subjects' for years began to petition and even fight for independence. African Americans, who linked the colonial dependency of Africans with their own subjugation to whites, were central to the movement of decolonization in Africa. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association transcended national boundaries and helped make 'black nationalism' a worldwide ideology.
