Abstract
A common theme in recent Cold War historiography emphasises the requirement for scholars to move beyond traditional superpower or East-West centric accounts of post-1945 international history to incorporate wider global perspectives. This is a challenge which historians have increasingly addressed, Marco Wyss being one of the latest with this book on decolonisation in West Africa and its impact on wider regional and global politics.
Focusing in particular on the independence of Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire in 1960, and their defence relationships with their former colonial overlords (the United Kingdom and France), Wyss provides a multi-faceted piece of historical analysis incorporating politics at the domestic, regional, continental, and international level, examining how the newly independent states managed their security policies in the context of decolonisation, East-West rivalry, and also post-imperial instability. Both Britain and France sought to maintain close defence ties with their respective colonies after independence, but, while British efforts to conclude a defence agreement with Nigeria foundered in January 1962, the French established a security arrangement with the Ivorian President, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, which laid the grounds for an enduring French military presence in Cote d’Ivoire. Wyss’ study seeks to explain these contrasting outcomes for both London and Paris.
The main findings of Postcolonial Security emphasise the importance of local politics, and the perspectives of the governing elites in Abidjan and Lagos. Houphouet-Boigny and his Nigerian counterpart, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, both intended to maintain friendly ties with their old imperial masters. Both were anti-Communist, and were also suspicious of other radical ideologies emerging in Africa with the end of European rule, with particular reference to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, the pan-Africanism of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah (pp. 180–181), or the anti-Western agendas of Ahmed Sékou Touré in Guinea (pp. 66–67), Modibo Keïta in Mali (p. 92), and Patrice Lumumba in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (p. 238). However, Nigerian attitudes were – to paraphrase Wyss – pro-Western but anti-colonial. Nigerians were firmly opposed to South African apartheid and the survival of white minority rule in Southern Africa (p. 54), outraged by French nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara (p. 51), impatient at the slow transition of military command from British to Nigerian officers after independence (pp. 158, 173), and fearful of being openly drawn into East-West hostilities and a possible Third World War. As such, Lagos’ willingness to maintain friendly ties with the British did not extend to welcoming a defence pact.
In contrast, Houphouet-Boigny – despite frequent frustration with the imperious Charles de Gaulle – wanted French troops on Ivorian soil after independence in order to preserve his rule, minimise spending on his own military, and to focus on internal development (p. 190). Furthermore, the increasingly dictatorial nature of his regime provided a contrast with the more pluralist and democratic politics of Nigeria, at least up until the coup which led to Balewa’s assassination on 15 January 1966 (p. 1).
Wyss convincingly argues that these contrasting Nigerian and Ivorian perspectives dovetailed with the priorities of their former overlords. The British were frustrated and disappointed with the collapse of the Defence Agreement with Lagos, but viewed relations with Nigeria through a Cold War lens, concluding that the military price paid – for example, with the April 1963 agreement that gave the Federal Republic of Germany the main role in creating the Nigerian Air Force (pp. 182–183) – was counterbalanced by its strategic benefits. Nigeria may have rejected a formal defence partnership with Britain, but it was at least still broadly pro-Western in orientation, and did not want military assistance from the Soviet bloc. In contrast, the French were determined to maintain a privileged neo-colonialist position over their former African territories, and in Cote d’Ivoire they acted decisively to exclude the USA and Israel from encroaching on training and equipping the Ivorian armed and security forces (pp. 206–209, 260–263). For his part, although Houphouet-Boigny used the threat of external aid to encourage concessions from Paris, notably the permanent stationing of troops at Port-Bouet, he had no intention of abandoning defence ties with France.
Wyss’ research, therefore, portrays a fascinating and convincing picture of the complex ties between the recently independent states and the former colonisers, showing that the former were able to bargain with and also gain concessions from the latter, and, in the case of Nigeria, were able to broaden their defence ties with third parties. The Ivorians and Nigerians also emerge in this book as active strategists, conscious of their strengths and weaknesses in their relations with their former rulers, wary (if not paranoid) about potential rivals and threats of subversion (the reviewer was surprised to learn that Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire came close to launching a military intervention in Togo after the assassination of President Sylvanus Olympio on 13 January 1963), and also adept in both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. The author’s findings are firmly based on an impressive research effort incorporating British, French, the United States, German, Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Ivorian archives. Postcolonial Security represents a major contribution to the fields of imperial, African, and Cold War history, and is strongly recommended to scholars in these respective fields.