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Politicians talk and it’s not just bread that goes up, history also goes up, even if it’s up the walls… Faced with the surprising news that the United Kingdom will deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who cross the English Channel as part of a million-dollar agreement with the government of this African country, history can only speak to remind us that every time the Anglo-Saxon world has put its hand in Africa, it has been to complicate everything.
If the history of Government of Rwanda and its president, Paul Kagameregarding the protection of Human Rights is questionable at best, even more terrifying is the legacy of the United Kingdom in the region where it now wants to park immigrants in a measure of dubious legality and which has shown its failures in similar experiences.
Rwanda and Uganda have already recently received deportees from Israel, which sent some 4,000 people under this “voluntary departure” scheme between 2014 and 2017. The vast majority of these left the country almost immediately and many tried to return to Europe through of illegal routes. The lack of resources or even the will to accommodate the deportations was among the causes of this failure.
However, further back in time the British already tried to use their African colonies to deport entire populations. In the early 20th century, the British Empire considered settling Jews in Uganda, then part of Kenya. The program had the support of Zionist leader Theodor Herzl to turn this region into a temporary refuge for European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism and was resurrected by Winston Churchill during the Second World War.
A free place for slaves
For the British Empire and other Western powers, Africa was at that time their playground, where they could dispose of third countries at will or create them from scratch to wash their dirty laundry or hide their miseries. Between 1662 and 1833, Great Britain transported three and a half million African slaves to Europe and America. This despicable activity, regulated by the Royal African Company, made use of agreements with tribes and slavers from the coast, who supplied the British and other European nations with people captured in the interior of africa.
In the late 19th century, the rise of the anti-slavery movement in the country now ruled by Boris Johnson forced the authorities to progressively give up human trafficking and sparked a national debate on how to return slaves to Africa. After much discussion, the abolitionist leaders chose a recently acquired territory, what is now Sierra Leone, as the future homeland of these free men and women.
Sierra Leone, a region that had served pirates and slavers of all stripes for centuries, overnight became a symbol of hope for returning Africans. The abolitionist leader Granville Sharp He bought a territory of 250 km² from the chiefs of different ethnic groups and installed there a first society of farmers that, despite the good will of the work, soon became a lucrative colonial business for London. Over the next half century, 70,000 slaves landed in the capital, Freetown (Town City), to which was added the migration of indigenous peoples from the interior of the country. In 1808, it legally became a colony of the British Empire.
Sierra Leone would merge with Gambia and Gold Coast (today called Ghana), another of the territories that Boris Johnson is considering for his deportation plans, in order to create the so-called British West Africa. The freed slaves did not stop growing in the following years and gaining independence. However, this colony did not manage to free itself from British tutelage until 1961, the year in which its process of full emancipation began. The Creoles, the British and the merchants of Syrian-Lebanese origin retained economic power, although they lost political power. In 1971, Siaka Stevens of the All People’s Congress he broke the last ties with Great Britain, proclaiming the Republic and becoming president.
The end of the British presence in Sierra Leone marked the decline of its African empire, where at its height the United Kingdom controlled more than 30%. South Africa, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria were some of the pieces managed by London. What persists today on the part of the British is their influence in third countries.
Liberia, an American creation
The United States boasts of its fiery past (it was born as a rebellious colony) of having avoided typically imperial structures throughout history. However, the fact that they did not have colonial territories (the case of Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines before that call this statement into question) does not mean that they have not exercised their control over third countries in an abusive manner. The history of Liberia, a country located on the west coast of Africa, is a good example of this.
This country was originally born, following the Sierra Leone project, as a destination for African slaves from the USA. in 1822 the American Colonization Society marked Liberia as a place to send freed African-American slaves. African-Americans gradually emigrated to the colony under the conviction that coexistence between white and black men was impossible, a statement held even by anti-slavery leaders such as Abraham Lincolnwhich defended deportation to Honduras, Guinea or the Dutch colony of Suriname, among other destinations, as “an act of generosity.”
However, the “promised land” of Liberia was not what was expected for free slaves, who had serious problems integrating into African society. Once in Africa they referred to themselves as “Americans” and were also recognized as such by the colonial authorities in neighboring Sierra Leone. Unresolved tensions soon arose between those who came from America (less than 5% of the current population) and the native Africans, who were seen as “uncivilized” and inferior by others.
The founding of Liberia received financial support from religious and philanthropic groups in the United States, and enjoyed the cooperation of the US government, which in 1819 allocated $100,000 for the establishment of this state. The very political and symbolic organization of the Liberian state, from its flag to its coat of arms, reflected its deep ties with the US, especially with the southern states.
This past in common with the US has meant many advantages for this country but it has also meant that Uncle Sam has never missed an opportunity to influence its domestic policy. This has resulted in loans lasting to this day, military bases in Liberia, and the US rubber company Firestone establishing the world’s largest rubber plantation there. From the Cold Warthe African country has been a fundamental place for the battle waged by the American intelligence services against the Soviet bloc and other powers that pull their strings in Africa.
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