The Black Man’s Burden

Abstract

The title of this chapter is taken from Basil Davidson’s 1992 book The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. The title takes its origins from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden (1899), in which he presented his very biased views on imperialism. British journalist Edward Morel drew attention to the abuses of imperialism, most notoriously in Congo Kinshasa, perhaps the most exploitative of the European colonies. Morel claimed it is the Africans who carry the “black man’s burden” (1920). Basil Davidson focused, in his book, on the period since Africa emerged from colonial rule in the 1950s, and after three decades of stagnation and poverty that led African scholars to call Africa the “lost continent”. The past decade, until 2008, offered a much more optimistic view and gave new hope.