Second World War Propaganda, Imperial Idealism and Anti-Colonial Nationalism in British West Africa

Abstract

Imperial propaganda during the Second World is often construed as discourse produced in the metropolises of Europe and extended to the colonies to shore up local support for the war. This suggests that the propaganda war in the colonies was simply an extension or replication of the propaganda war in Europe, to which colonized peoples made minimal input and over which they had no control. This paper argues that West Africans were not just receivers and replicators of colonial war propaganda. The colonies were also sites for the production of imperial war propaganda and Africans were central to colonial propaganda machinery. The role of Africans in the making of colonial war propaganda is particularly evident in the paradoxical effect that war propaganda had on the politics of decolonisation in British West Africa. War propaganda provided an opportunity for Britain to rally the support of her West African subjects against what was presented as a dreaded common enemy. However, the war also provided new opportunities for emergent West African elites to articulate their nationalist demands on a world stage drawing on the same discourses about freedom and self-determination that underlined imperial war propaganda.