ABSTRACT
The modern African state is in many ways a product of the post-Second World War universal human rights movement. The end of the war in 1945 marked the beginning of an era of renewed international emphasis on the themes of freedom, democracy, and fundamental human rights. These ideas had direct impacts on independence struggles throughout the continent. Although nationalist demands for independence had been mounting in many parts of the colonized world for several years, the Second World War made self-determination a living principle for many in the non-European world. The Allied Powers led by Britain and the United States proclaimed self-determination and other fundamental rights as universally applicable and the guiding principles of Allied policy. The war was presented as a struggle for the ideals of freedom, democracy, and self-determination against the oppression and tyranny of Nazism and Fascism. The Atlantic Charter issued by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 famously declared that both leaders “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live” and that they wished to “see sovereign rights and selfgovernment restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them” (Atlantic Charter, 1941 ). In Africa as elsewhere in the colonized world, nationalists demanded that these ideals of freedom and self-determination used to justify Allied war campaigns in Europe be also extended to them.
