Abstract

GUIMARAES, José Marques. US Africa Policy from World War II to the Early 1960s. População e Sociedade [online]. 2022, n.37, pp.99-117.  Epub Jan 02, 2023. ISSN 0873-1861.  https://doi.org/10.52224/21845263/rev37v1.

Despite the so-called American anti-colonial tradition (the legacy of independence, or Spirit of ‘76), between World War II and the beginning of the 1960s, the African policy of the United States was always subordinated to the security priorities of Europe. In fact, at the end of World War II, Europe was threatened with collapse, not only due to the approximately 80 million deaths it caused, but also to the gigantic needs for social and economic reconstruction caused by the massive destruction of its productive, housing and commercial activities, which made it impossible to satisfy the basic conditions of survival. A chaotic situation from which emerged a virtually unstoppable human torrent, through which the populations of the countries involved in the war would seek to conquer a world free from misery and hunger, exploitation and oppression.

Faced with this “revolutionary wave”, exacerbated by the political impotence of most European elites largely discredited as a result of their capitulation and collaboration with the Nazi occupier, the US government feared that it could make it possible to implement what it qualified as a communist threat, choosing to help rebuild devastated Europe. What makes it possible to understand the "Europe First Policy" and the consequent subordination of all African perspectives of the foreign policy of the United States to European priorities, an orientation that would begin to be changed between 1958 and 1960, during the Eisenhower administration, who claimed an independent American policy for Africa, when the uninterrupted torrent of the conquest of independence by the colonies was about to submerge the entire continent.

In turn, the Kennedy administration ensured the continuity of this policy, despite the apparent support for Afro-Asiatic anti-colonial claims, which highlighted the difficulties of adapting to the political priorities of the decolonization era on the part of European colonial powers, especially Portugal. However, this reorientation has never changed the foreign policy of the United States, which has always focused on defending Europe against all kind of threats.

Keywords : Anticolonialism; Colonialism; Europe First Policy; Independence.

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