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On the Conflict Potential of Inherited Boundaries in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Ravi L. Kapil
Ravi L. Kapil
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Extract

The consequences that flow from the collapse of empires have never been easily predicted. Seldom, however, has the demise of an imperial system been accompanied by as many systematic analyses and projections as has the current period of decolonization. Much of the recent discussion concerning the newer members of the international system has made reference to their so-called artificial political boundaries. It has been predicted, among other things, that the political boundaries of Asia and Africa, by virtue of their presumed artificiality, harbor the seeds of “many a troublesome irredenta in the future.” Frequent references are made, in the growing literature on nation-building and political modernization, to the “natural” or “unnatural” qualities of these boundaries, and the absence of careful general studies of this topic has been noted. This article proposes to examine the dominant characteristics of African political boundaries and the circumstances under which disputes over their location have so far been generated, and to deduce some general propositions about their conflict potential. The thrust of the argument to be presented is that there is a low conflict potential in contemporary African boundaries and that earlier predictions of instability are not likely to be borne out.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , July 1966 , pp. 656 - 673
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1966

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References

1 See, for example, the resolutions on boundaries adopted at the Pan-African Congress, Manchester, 1945; the All African People's Conference, Accra, 1958; and the Tunis Conference, 1960, reproduced in the appendix to Legum, Colin, Pan-Africanism (New York 1962).Google Scholar

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4 See Boggs, S. Whittemore, International Boundaries: A Study in Boundary Functions and Problems (New York 1940), 6ff.Google Scholar, which still remains the best thorough study of political boundaries. Also Boggs, Stephen B., “Boundary Concepts in the Setting of Time and Place,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLIX (September 1959), 241–55.Google Scholar

5 This classification is based on the typology advanced originally by Hartshorne, Richard in his “Suggestions on the Terminology of Political Boundaries,” Mitteilungen des Vereins der Geographen an der Universitaet Leipzig, Fascicule 14/15 (1936), 180–92.Google Scholar

6 Resolution No. 2, All African People's Conference, Accra, December 13, 1958.

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14 As seen for example in the Italo-Abyssinian Convention of 1908, which stipulated that the eastern boundary of Abyssinian jurisdiction should follow the “territorial boundaries between the tribes of the Rahanuin which remain dependent on Italy and all other tribes to its north, which remain dependent on Abyssinia” (Article I), in Herstlet, 11, 1223.

15 See, for example, the Annex to the Anglo-Abyssinian Treaty of 1897 delimiting the boundary between Abyssinia and the British Somaliland Protectorate, ibid., 1, 428.

16 For a discussion of the role of political boundaries in the shaping of emergent cultural features, see Fischer, Eric, “On Boundaries,” World Politics, 1 (January 1948), 196–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weigand, Guido, “Effects of Boundary Changes in South Tyrol,” Geographical Review, XL (July 1950), 364–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 This count excludes the twenty additional boundaries between independent African states and adjacent colonial territories, such as the boundaries between Guinea and Portuguese Guinea, Cameroons and Rio Muni, Morocco and Ifni, or South Africa and Swaziland.

18 “Some Problems in the Study of Nation-Building,” 14.

19 See Hill, passim.

20 Reyner, Anthony M., “Morocco's International Boundaries,” Journal of Modern African Studies, I (September 1963), 313–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Arab Information Center, The Problem of Mauretania (New York 1961)Google Scholar; The Delegation of Mauretania to the United Nations, The Islamic Republic of Mauretania and the Kingdom of Morocco (New York, n.d.); and Zartman, I. William, “The Politics of Boundaries,” Journal of Modern African Studies, III (August 1965), 155–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24 The most complete discussion of the Ewe unification problem is Coleman, James S., “Togoland,” International Conciliation, No. 509, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (New York, September 1956)Google Scholar; see also Olympio, Sylvanus E., “African Problems and the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs, XL (October 1961), 50–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Austin, Dennis, “The Ghana-Togo Frontier,” Journal of Modern Ajrican Studies, 1 (June 1963), 139–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26 Hunt, John A., A General Survey of the Somaliland Protectorate, 1944–1950 (London 1951).Google Scholar

27 For example, Touval, Saadia, Somali Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Costagno, A. A., “The Somali-Kenyan Controversy,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 11 (July 1964), 165–88Google Scholar; Drysdale, John, The Somali Dispute (London 1964).Google Scholar

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31 The most thorough discussion of this is to be found in the writings of Lewis, I. M.. See his A Pastoral Democracy (London 1961)Google Scholar; The Somali Lineage System and the Total Genealogy, mimeographed (Hargeisa 1957)Google Scholar; and “Force and Fission in a Northern Somali Clan,” American Anthropologist, LXIII (February 1961), 94–112.Google Scholar

32 See the excellent discussion of the dysfunctional role of traditional attachments in the creation of nontraditional territorial loyalties by Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Geertz, , ed., Old Societies and New States (New York 1963), 105–57.Google Scholar

33 This general problem is explored at greater length in my forthcoming study of political and administrative integration in the Somalilands.

34 Article III, Clause 3, of the Charter of the Organization of African Unity calls for “respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each State and for its inalienable right to independent existence.” This had led some observers to infer an implied acceptance of an African uti possidetis by the members of the OAU. There has thus far been no formal acceptance of this doctrine however. See Boutros Ghali, Boutros, “The Addis Ababa Charter,” International Conciliation, No. 546 (January 1964), 29–30.Google Scholar