Africa c. 1947

After World War II, the UN issued a declaration that all people had the right to self-governance and in 1945 created an agency to supervise the decolonization of dependent territories, some of which had been ceded by Italy after its defeat in World War II. In 1947, these territories were administered through the United Nations Trusteeship Council and placed under French, British, Belgium and Portuguese administration. Spain’s only African possessions, Spanish Sahara and Spanish Guinea, remained firmly under Spanish colonial control. The European administrators were not only mandated to orchestrate full independence but were also expected to ultimately yield their own possessions. The slowness of the progress towards independence frustrated many of Africa’s educated elite, leading to the rise of Pan Africanism and militant nationalist movements. This erupted into the Algerian War of Independence, the Mau-Mau uprisings in British Kenya and the Portuguese colonial wars.