A Book Review - The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation - state Book by Basil Davidson

In many parts of Africa ordinary people are worse off today than at the end of the colonial era. What or who is to blame? Davidson, Africa's pre-eminent popular historian, pursues a line of argument that is alternately subtle and romantically simplistic. He places ultimate responsibility at the door of non-Africans, aided and abetted by those Africans who too enthusiastically embraced alien ways, in particular the foreign political model of the nation-state. It is not clear what practical modern alternative to that model ever existed by the author's reckoning-he vaguely commends "community self-government" and "participatory democracy"-but his comparisons of the historical evolution of Africa with that of eastern Europe and, more briefly, Japan are thought-provoking.