Boston University

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Seidman Research Papers Book reviews

1978

A review: Basil Davidson, Let

Freedom Come, Africa in Modern
History

Seidman, Ann

https://hdl.handle.net/2144/25743
Boston University
 .A_ review: Has i l Davidson, Let l:''re e dom lJome i Arrica in Modern
History (Hoston: Atlantic-Little Brown, 9(B)

· "The history of modern Al"rica is ab-ove all a hist.ory .of

the :i,.deas -and development of nationalism thriaugh the ·
twentieth cen u·r - ." · (_ ~t:r) . · ·. · -· ,
\_ ---~ - ~

~his is how Hasil Davidson introduces his latest book,

Let .l:''reedom C-ome, in which he brings to bear his extenstve

knowledg e of African his t ory to i'ormulate a synt h esis focusin g '-...~

on the complex relationships between changing modes or production,

emer g in g class structures an d the ±'ormation of ideolog ies whic h

have shaped the last century of the strugg le ror freedom.

lt is difficult, as he says, to select the critical trends

and issues rrom the vast arra y of events and p e rsonaliti~s which

have influenced t h e continent's vital role in the world system

of today. lt is well worthwhile re-readin g this book several

times to ferret out, from the wealth of historical detail, the

author's insi ghtful analysis of a ran g e of widely-debated issues.

Davidson's conclusions as to the nature of pre-capitalist

modes of production are drawn from _. .. evidence he has

presented in his earlier wo rks : African cultu r es ~ ere embodied

in communities of differin g sizes and power and a~ differi n~

points of economic and _social org anization, bound together

b y common lan g uages, cultures, and community rules. ln ~urope,

these forms of nationalism pr eeeeded the formation of the nation-

states that emer g ed with the advent of capitalism. ln Africa,

"'l'he centrally unif y in g concept, restin g on t he mode of production

which has shaped it but also been shaped by it, is that or kinship.
(p. 4b
 -2-'
By the end or the 19th Ce ntury, Davidson assebts, African

communities were no longer living --i f they ever had been- in

a " ul iss of primitive communism." By then, the subsistence

economy remained al:mmst nowhere. .J:t'rom about 400 ec, or earlmer

in favored regions like the Nile, less simple modes of proauctiom

had evolved in which lineage leaders, acknowledgea community

ed
heaas, regulated and accmmulat I exploitable labor power. "With

this lineag e mode of production ••• the ancient inequalities of

,,
African · society-'
-- ·-
."TheY wer~ seve~e.
... ___ --
pe~an." He ad~·s; ·

Women provided. t.q.e chief source of exploitable

•
- -.- - ---

labour power: as daught~rs but ·evert ~ore as - wi~es; and in a l~rge

sense thmse lin~age modes of production became s y stems of tributary

l:sut ·
labour." (v".54) , he suggests that 1 slave 1 labor, or men as well

as w~,~en, was an early forerunner of wage - paid labor, rather than the

condition of 1 rightless chattels." Social stratefication, in

the easy g oing etho$ of rural life, was not severe; even women

and sJ.,aves could find their per·sonal identi-fy

. -·
and value.

Over time, as the lineage mode of production developed,

the state emer g ed, "the qua litative development fro m a quantity

of lineages to a community equipped with structures of central

g overnment or control." (p. 55) Stratification became less eas y

g oin g , simple states developed into complex states of several or

even many c om~ unities, spurred in particular b y the development

of lon g -distnnce trade and the need for the securit y , re g ulation or

monopoloy of c ommercial control.

 -3-
These economies were far fr om stag nant. 'l'hey g rew, became

more effective, larger, very enterprisin g . But they did not devel-

op into different, more advanced c apitalis t structures. Wh1 le

emphasizin g the complexitie ~ of their s ystems , David son sugg ests

the underly in g reason was . that "a linea g e mode of production, con-

tent with wa g eless l abour , crucially inhibited the development of

wa g e-paid labour ••• new methods of production,and ••• new relations

of pro auction." (p. Sb )

The new coastal part ners hip with E uro~~an commerce, first in

g old and ivory, later in the sale of captives for overseas enslavement,
- - --~--- ~--====
indu.ced the rise of advanced forms of mercanti;Le initiative ·, and the

emer g ence of a'new class 1 of coastal merch ants; but these"remained as

peripheral elements within their enclosin g systems." ( P. bO) The: -

me r chants w~re agents of export and i mport between the

- g reat chiefs and ki n!s of the inland - country who fostered state
~
controlled tradin g ; and huro p ean businessmen who controlledJ shlpping,
d
: c:-==----:-)versaas markets, and sources of import items like gur1s and g unpwo-

der. They h a d little economic incentive to inves t in production

until the decline of the Atlantic slave _t r.a de and the emergence

of 'legitimate' trade in expert crope produced by Africans.

And then, b~fo re a new, eme~ g ant bo ug eoisie could break free
from the old struct ural constraints, the colonial 'scrambl e ',

backed by technolo g ically superior weapons, imposed i mperia l state

structures which barred them from competin g with European mon opolies .
1
'l 'he resulting crisis ' l e d onward to the groun dw ork of nationalism.

In the remainder of the book, Davidson seeks to explain the

consequences of this experience for the nationalist movements

that had , by the mid -l 970s , created nearly So new states on the

continent. He begins his narrative with the first pan - Afric an

 -~ -
•
Con gress in lb9 9 , a year when the Gold Coast Aborigines declared,

"'l'he feverish rush for plunder and division of Africa is about

to be consumated •••• " and the British were "'slogg in g northwards

to the ~r~nvaal." (p. 2B) He sees tne historican's task

as deciding which, in the "confus~d and often chaotic river of events, ..

constitutes the underlying structural features belonging to its

"shaping bed." (p. 23) Dividing the century into pAriods, he in t ro-
1 11
duces /structural chapters' to suggest aspects of the river's bed

at this or that point of time." (p. 25)

the river's flow,

~
,. ·'
':-. sug-gest~l! li~s
.
..
Iviost chapters th&n track
Ike.
' the interplay be tween personal1 tieS'

events, and underlying s true tural features.

-. - -:-:-
. :'-
.--
.:-:: ~ · , Davidson maintains that

ne1ther the Africans no~ the Europeans were f u lly conscious of the

underlying factors impe lling the colonial invasion. It is possible,

nevertheless, to trace •a number of decisive underlying motiv~sa ..

Th~ ambition of European traders to secure their own monopolies,

breaking opposing African ones; mounting rivalriPs between the

European powers; ,==: the conflicts of a variety of special interests,

and the larger cap~_j;ali8ts' desire for profHiable investments in miner-

(
al deposits. .

Da ~i sson · divides · · colonial activities into three fields:

~he goa din g of Africans into migratory labor reserves for the

~uropean-owned mines and estates througho ut the contiEent, as well

as for Affican-owned export crop farms in West Africa; the ~propri-

ation of African lands in east, central and southern Africa; and the

impo s ition of· mopopolistic tradin g companies which, with colonial

governmental aid, destrvyed African competition to gain control of

lucrative overseas trade. It is, perhaps, unfortunate th a t he did

not also analyze the way a handful of g iant british and French banks
 shaped the colonial money and banking structures, playing a key

role in funneling the profits of expanding colonial business back

to the metropole.

Davidson identified as the g reat turnin g point in the colonial

1
enclosure' the 1930s when the im p erial powers, seekin g to elude the

disasterous impact of' the Great Slump, exp anded and ri g idified

t h eir colonial systems to the exclusion of ot h ers.

Ag ainst this brief 'forbiddingly bleak' account, Davidson

analyzes the two main trends in t h e first half century of African

responses and initiatives. ~he vast majorit y of the population

first strove to de f end or advance their individual interests and

identities by defensive warfare or alliances with the ~uropeans;

and then s ought to sha pe new life patterns by compromises mar k ed

b y occasional outbursts of resistance • . Gradually , their org anizat-

ional ef'f'orts shifted from a reli g ious focus to trade union actions.

But nationali s m meant practically nothin g t o t h em.

~he second trend, initially tiny, was composed of western

edUBted men and a few women, caught in a deep-seated contradiction:

They typically
--· -- - ~., ----

re jec t~d the indigenous cultures of th~ • .1111 tera te masses', but
v-rere thP.msel ves rejected and discriminated against by the' whi t e
civi l :t zation' they sought to emula t e. Some began, tentatively, to
espouse nationalist and Pan-Negroiet ideas. Save for _ stray
exceptions, only in South Africa did ideas of anti-racism begin
to coalesce with those of revolution based on analysis of the class
nature of the imposed system.
The Second World War was deeisive among many contradicb~!7 press-
 -6-
ures for chan g e. African recruits and c onscri p ts died in remote

~uropean and Asian battles. Those who returned brought with them

a determination t o build a new life. At the same time, t h ~ old

imperialist monopolies were shaken ; to their roots. The Americans

on one side, the Soviet Union on the other -- though for different

reasons -- haa no interest in restoring them. Yet t h e war had gone

far to reinforce and complete the structures of colonial extract-

ion as African ex p orts multiplied. 'l'he undermin.ip g and ~islocatiorJ

of African communities proceeded apace. And ideas of nationalism

were spurred by the Atlantic Charter and promjses offreedom.

The ~uropean powers sought after the war, as uavidson shows,

to consolidate their economic expansion through a variety of moetly

ill-fated 'development' schemee. The u.s .• without seeking terri-

torial e xp snsion, promised development assistance to African elites,

seeking to open the doors to American enterpriae. Increasingly

militant trade unionism was shunted-out of politics, . its leaderl!l

encouraged to affiliate with the 'moderate' ICFTU by u.s. funds

an~ scholars }l.ips. Many nationalist leaders, not a little fearful

i
of ~ t r adB~ : uni~ti'~, ' preferred to organize their
I ,/"

own demonstra tions. In settler-dominated regions, anti-trade union

violence tended to strengthen trade union-nationalist alliances

at l,a\ un<til the nationalists, hav~f!i;l.\n ~ . state powe) · __

~ -- ~ "7 b~gan to o ppo!le the m-111 tancy inspired 'by eoci s:.l

struggle.

·Davidson s h ar p ly exposes t he contradictions between the limited

nationalism that sh aped ~ost of the new African nation-states and

t h e continuin g strug gle for social change. In his typ ically vivid

prose, he draws a parallel with the 1 balkanized' polities that

emer g ed in ~astern ~uoope in the 1920s:

 -7-

"Li ke circumstances tend to produce like results. In

Africa as in J:<.;astern J:<.;urope .-7--r~-~--~ ~,._-~- .-.- .
'~tron g ~en' walked in solitary power while corru t ·
l~ke a d1sease, ana rorce took the place of fell P ~?n spread
v1olence of.pers~asion. Once again it was shown°~~a~Pt~~~ ·
way.of solv1n g the national problem could not solve the
soc1al problem; that the colonial state turned nation t t
could not beN usefull y reS$rmed, but must be revolut.-s_a ~
and that only this kind of revolution only a cl 10~12~ ;
to the solving of the social problem by. '·rh t ear pr10r1 t y
1"ut ur · ht •· a ever weans the
e m1 g revea 1 , would be aole to fulfil th · ·
or national f'reedom." tp. 293 ) e prom1ses

F'or Davi dson holds t h at, while the gai ns of' independence were

real and many, the i mported model · imposed a h i gh

price. 'l 'he anti-colonial movEmF.r.ts had ·emerged as nation a lists, but

for the most part they were nationalists wit ho ut nations. - ~he

nations ~emained bo be buil~ in the face

- ----------- -
of growing skepticism as t h ose in power,urglng 'modernization',
-
- -
increasingly appeared to act to advance the ir own interests as

a propPrty-owning class. By 1970, some 19 states were under

one or another kind of military regime, with more on the way.

The majority of their inhabitants continued to live in deepening

rural poverty or Urban slums. ,. ,

L ~ke msny o t h ers, Davidson finds dirficulties in deciding on

the appropriate terminolo gy for analyzing the class structures

characteristic of the new African states. He underscores their

predominantly rural features, and points out that 90 to 95% were

--
united neither in their social consciousness Per in a nationalist
-----·~ - - -·-- - ----'----- - -
ldeology. Rather the new nations ·remained little more than a collec-

tion of commu ·ities amalgamated by t h e hazards of colonial frontier

d e lin e ation. Their mode of p roductioil , however, was no longer . that

within which their separate s.nc~ stral li ne age systems had been mo·l ded.
 =(:)-

-----
----- The imposed colonial mol e had forged externally dependent capitalist

~xport ~ r1c l a v~s ::J11t"ro :.lnd3d by l Br g e vnderd eve loped 'support zon~s'

providing cheap labor and, wher e poss i bl ~ , c h eep f e ed. By th9 1960s,
ent,
th~se regions had become mutually interdependj a s growing numbers

of underfnd unemployed, many maintaining rural ties, crowded into

urban slums alongside the lu~ky few with stable jobs. Yet the~Se

new working cla ss elements lacked consciousness of thAi r emerging

status.

Distinguished from the 'lol-Jest cl a sses,' Davidson suggests,

there began t o appea r th ,,~ · 'have somethings',

- variously,and he argues

inadequately, termed 'intermediate s·trata' or 'petty

bourgeosie': those with regul~r income~rrom private enterprise

lto insert 1 ·
or those who managea{themselves · into the service of tue new

state~ the •regular troops of the nationalist movements'.

'l'he topmost ranks of this group merges with the 'polit.icaiclasses'

'Jh e:se , h e h olds, while fittin g ·themselves into the local party-

political structure which, after independence, influenced or

controlled the local route to benefits, remained tied to foreign

capitalist interests which dominated the economy , a distinctive

t y pe ·of 1 auxilliary bouggeoisie. 1

Uniorbunately, uavidson does not explor~ theway roreign rirms,

through control of the 'command_ing heights' -- baelc industries, bank

and foreign and inte rnal wholesale trade -- continued to dominat e

the n~w nation states' political economies. But -does
indicate the futility of expecting these new state systems, 'occup1e~

by small fractions of their inhabitants speaking in the name of

national unity, to con tribute · to better c ondi ti ons e~r the great
 -9-
majority o1' the peop le who, "p eer.ing into this national idea

from the outside¥ remained 'dubious and confused, and not much

less alie~: ated from the sources of power than durin g colonial

times." (p. 31 ))

Vavidson holds that the hope for real development lies in the

new Arrican model growing but of the politics of mass partici-

pat ion, appearing primarily in regimes with weak economies.

Some, like ~anzania, became independent re g imes within the

'neo-colonial'situation; others were re gimes -in-formation, like

Mozambique, Angola, and uuinea-Bissau.

- -· - - - - -- - - - - - - -·-
He sketches the efforts of th~ Tanzanian party, T~~U, to build
mass participation as a protection against the increa sing power of
a bureaucra cy t"!nlarged by the nationalization of banks and other
~J-k tv>()h
foreign enterprises. By the 1970s, he notes, these~were the subject
of cri t_ical debate. He declaree -a~- the central theoretical question
wheth~r the dominant strata, bureaucratic or othPrwise, given their
technical ability in running thP state, must n e cessarily come · down
on the pro-capitalist side of a class conte·st with ~t;~.sants .lllld
wage workers. His example of 3!1 alternative possibility ~­ So-
)
rna .ia , tod8y ~eem~ · less hop e f u ·:f:s,~ditional nat.iona-~ t.

and military confrontation s~em to foster increased authoritarianism

Davidson mentions , briefly , other attempts to link old

rorms of self-defense against colonialism with new forms ~ast in

the mold of modErnizing but revolutionary ideas. 'l 'he Lumumb~mts)

erforts to organize guerilla warfare in Zaire in the mid-1960s,

for example, ended in disaster because the leader s failed to

develop moderni~ing theorie~ to replace unscientific reliance

on ancestral beliefs. He contrasts this experience to that of

~AlGG in uuinea-Bissau which initially c 0nfronted similar condit-

'
ions . As areas of Guinea-Bissau became liberated, some of the
 -10-

rignters began to exploit their new autnority for personal

reasons , rejecting overall n a tional authority and abusing people,

especially women; t hey also sought advmce &n old customs and

beliefs about witchcraft. the ~AlUU had to mobilize against

these traditional ideas. · Ia t he mi ds t or the fighting in l9b3,

the PAlUU held a conference in which the leadership confronted

the issue h ead on. As Davidson mays, it was a critical mommEt,

decis~ve for further progress, when the primacy of ancestral

belier was made to gi ve way to a fully secular interpretation

of reality. He cites Neto who emphasized that in Angola, too,

the key task was " to free and modernize our peoples by a dual

revolution: against their traditional structures which can no

longer serve them, and against colonial rule." tp. 3SOJ

Achievement of success in the liberation strugles, Davidson

concluJ es,

- .____ _______
() T

7 "m eant accepting that t h e solving of the'national

__
g~est1on', the problem or building a national conscious-
ss ~eal enough to absorb each existing 'pre-national'
~onsc1ousness ~r individualmst divergence, must always
depend on solv1ng the 'social question ' 1 the problem of
meetin g the material and cultural needs of everyday life
Out of this necessary acceptance (and those who refused it
were lost) there came the p ractice of their revolutionary
theory: the immensely difficult promotion, in liberated zones
or a new socio-cul tural system based on the democracy or '
vi~l~ge commi~tees and the creation of elementary schools ,
cl1n1cs, trad1n g networkd, tribunals, and the rest. A new
type of state could thus emerge in embryo even while the
wars continued.~~ lP· 354)

- - ....-__
' -··
-· ~

··What the new republics of the mid-70s adhered tD was in no

way JAfrican socialism', or 1 Arab so6ialism' o~ ~ny ot h er or-
namental substitute ror the real thing: they adhered to 1 sci-
ep_:!;il"i c sociali!sm. j J I ,'- ·;J· · b .._ ,_~ - - - --- ~ ~-nt-.

· he 'old' ana 'new' nationalism,

The basic differen~e betweerJ t

'· Davidson points ou t ' l·s that in the latter,

 --11-

tne social question had to have primacy over the national

question. You h ad to start rrom th e real and immediate
needs of the people 1 at tne base': their need for cont r ol
over their own communities, t h eir need for understanding
how "Lo use this control so as to improve life, tneir need for
means to make this imnrovement possible. tp. 3 ' (~)

Additional t h eoretical and practical problems, Davidson

po ints out, need to be r esolved in the continuin g strug gle to

realize the 1 new African model .' The revolutionary inner

leadership'core~, he sugg ests, needs to expand and democra -

. ti ze itself" into a rev o lutionary national party within the

national movement .

!:''urther, he po ses the question of the relationship between

the revolutionary part y and the new state which it has brought

into existence. One mi ght add that this question is rendered

vastly more perplexed by the difficulties which participatory

s tate institutions, shaped in liberated villa g e areas, must

inevitably confront when they seek to achieve national contr ol

of the technolog ically c omplex 'commandi n g h ei ghts' in order

to transform their inheri ted externally dependent politic~l econo-

,. mi c structures .

And beyond these looms the problm~ or resolving the potential

conflicts between the new African nations, or achievin g t h e

"org anic unit y between national peoples •.• that would mark the

supersession of the frontiers of colonial partition, and the

threshold of a new erea, and the onset of a new history." t p . J b d' )

One may not a g ree with all of Davison's t heoretical for mulations.

One could ar g ue over selection or t h is or that _. event a:.r

trend as t he crucial piece of evidence. Hut tnis is surely an

im portant book for those concerned with the use of theor y as a

g uide, not only in Africa, but tnroug hout the ~ hird Wor ld. lt is

not a book simply t o be read. lt should be studied in de pth .