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Ex-Servicemen at the Crossroads: Protest and Politics in Post-War Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Adrienne M. Israel
Adrienne M. Israel
Affiliation:
History Department, Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina
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Extract

Before the late 1960s, historians generally agreed that World War II had increased mass support for African nationalism. Initially, they claimed that soldiers returned home politicised by war-time experiences and looking for opportunities to spread new ideas acquired through contacts with Asian nationalists. Subsequent scholars gradually chipped away at these assumptions, some completely discarding them as ‘myths’. Current opinion suggests that the way African soldiers reacted to the war depended on their ethnicity, class origins, education levels, and military occupations, and that their role in independence politics depended on local conditions.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 359 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Three studies in the late 1960s focused attention on the post-war influence of ex-soldiers: (I) Olusanya, G. O., ‘The Rôle of Ex-Servicemen in Nigerian Politics’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 6, 2, 08 1968, pp. 225–32, conceded that the returning veterans had become politically important in Ghana, but not in Nigeria where ethnic competition among nationalists and the vastness of the country had stifled their political potential.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (2) Schleh, Eugene P. A., ‘Post-Service Careers of World War Two Veterans: British East and West Africa with Particular Reference to Ghana and Uganda’, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1968, concluded that ex-servicemen in Ghana played no greater rôle in politics than other interest groups, and that those in Uganda had little, if any, influence.Google Scholar (3) Shiroya, Okete J. E., ‘The Impact of World War II in Kenya: the rôle of ex-servicemen in Kenyan nationalism’, Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 1968, described Kenya's ex-soldiers as unorganised agents of political development whose impact, although indirect, was an important factor in the independence movement.Google Scholar

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