Neo‑Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism-The book that terrified foreign powers to overthrow Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah: Ghana’s first president. 

 

Kwame Nkrumah, the architect of Ghana’s independence, a renowned African statesman and scholar, wrote the book titled “Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” in 1965, eight years after Ghana gained its independence. He described how former colonial powers continued to dominate and take advantage of recently independent nations in this book. The terms “neocolonialism” and “post-colonialism” gained popularity during Africa’s decolonization.

 

Nkrumah wrote: “The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used to exploit rather than to promote the prosperity of the less developed parts of the world. Under neo-colonialism, investment widens rather than narrows the gap between the rich and the poor in the world. The struggle against neo-colonialism is not about excluding the capital of developed countries from the economies of less developed countries. It is about preventing the financial power of developed countries from being used to undermine the economies of less developed countries.”

 

Neocolonialism is therefore the continued exploitation of former colonies by their former rulers, based on economic inequality. Like colonialism, it includes cultural and language influence, as well as unequal economic and political‑military relations between the former colony and the former colonial power. A clear example is the so‑called “banana republics,” countries whose economies depend on exporting one main agricultural product, often controlled by a single foreign company.

 

Colonialism was a system in which powerful countries controlled weaker ones from the 16th to the 20th centuries. These powerful countries conquered smaller states for many reasons: to make trade easier, to take natural resources, and to control trade routes. Countries with strong economies and armies became metropolises, while weaker countries became colonies.

 

The metropolises spread their culture and language, while the colonies lost political and economic independence. Often, citizens of the metropolises had more rights and privileges in the colonies than the local people. For example, British colonizers in Australia applied the Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights to themselves, but not to the Indigenous Australians, who were bought or kidnapped and forced to work on British farms.

 

European powers treated colonized cultures differently, but in most cases, colonization caused suffering and tragedy. For example, the British East India Company’s rule caused major famines in Bengal in the 1760s and 1790s, killing an estimated 10 million people in the first famine. Colonialism in its original form ended after World War II, when societies began to support human rights, democracy, and decolonization.

 

The year 1960 is often called “the year of Africa.” It was the year when the largest number of African countries became independent, 17 nations, many of them formerly colonized by France, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Gabon. That same year, the UN General Assembly passed a declaration supporting independence for colonial countries and peoples, confirming the right of all nations to self‑determination and calling for the quick end of colonialism.

 

Neocolonialism affects the whole world today. Developed countries still spread their political and economic influence using post‑colonial methods. For example, one condition for the Philippines’ independence was allowing the United States to keep military bases there. Also, Northern Cyprus has been occupied by Turkey since 1974. Some organizations are also accused of spreading the culture and values of former colonial powers.

 

One major effect of post‑colonialism is ethnocide, the destruction of a people’s national or ethnic identity. This happens when local languages disappear, and Western traditions replace local customs, erasing history and culture. Western values are often linked with personal freedom, rational thinking, and democracy, but countries like Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong show that modernization and progress can happen without full Westernization.

 

On 21 February 1966, Kwame Nkrumah traveled to North Vietnam at the invitation of Ho Chi Minh and then continued to China. While he was in Beijing, a group of conspirators, many trained in England, carried out a coup in Ghana. The main leader was Lieutenant Colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, commander of the 2nd Infantry Brigade in Kumasi. They used Nkrumah’s absence to take power. After the coup, Nkrumah never returned to Ghana and lived in exile in Guinea.

 

Kwame Nkrumah later went to Romania for medical treatment in August 1971. He died there on April 27, 1972, at the Flamingo Hotel in Bucharest. He had been suffering from a serious, incurable illness, later identified as prostate cancer. Years after his passing, declassified U.S. records showed that the CIA was instrumental in the 1966 overthrow of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

 

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