Settling with the Tide: Polish Settlers and Decolonization in Southeast Africa after World War II

• In Event: Beyond Moscow: Eastern Europeans vis-à-vis the Liberation Movements in the Global South

Abstract

When World War II ended in August 1945, the European empires’ hold on Africa was still strong: it took the following decade for different domestic, metropolitan, and international factors to converge and kickstart decolonization. Furthermore, the period immediately following the global conflict was a time of a mass white settlement in Africa, also of a number of Poles, including former refugees in the British colonies, as well as newcomers, Polish émigrés arriving mostly from Western Europe. In this paper, the complicated attitudes of the Poles in southeast Africa toward colonialism and decolonization will be analyzed.

Author

• Piotr Puchalski, U of the National Education Commission, Krakow (Poland)