Marked Accra

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

African independence

In about forty years almost every African country won independence from European rule, beginning with Libya in 1951 and Ghana in 1957. Some won it by negotiation, others by long wars.

Place
Accra · Nairobi · Algiers · Léopoldville (Kinshasa) · BissauAfrica
Laid out as
A revolutionHow things were before, the moment it turned, and how things were after.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

Before

  1. IPan-Africanism
  2. IIGhana, 1957
  3. IIIThe year of Africa, 1960
  4. IVKenya and the Mau Mau war
  5. VAlgeria
  6. VILusophone Africa
  7. VIIFreedom in South Africa

After

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Kwame Nkrumah
  • Jomo Kenyatta
  • Patrice Lumumba
  • Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
  • Amílcar Cabral
  • Julius Nyerere

Objects

  • Independence flags
  • Nkrumah’s midnight speech

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1951 to 1994. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?