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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Selling the War Abroad: West African Initiatives and the Making of British War Propaganda, 1939-1945
Author:Ibhawoh, BonnyISNI
Year:2007
Periodical:Lagos Historical Review
Volume:7
Pages:35-56
Language:English
Geographic terms:West Africa
Great Britain
Subjects:propaganda
public opinion
colonialism
nationalism
World War II
History and Exploration
Military, Defense and Arms
Literature, Mass Media and the Press
Abstract:Studies in British war propaganda during the Second World War have focussed mainly on the efforts made at 'selling the war at home.' In many of these studies war propaganda in the colonies is seen simply as an extension of the discourses produced in the metropoles of Europe. Imperial propaganda was essentially the dissemination of information from the metropole to the colonies. 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 the colonial propaganda machinery. Imperial propaganda had to be modified to meet the needs of the colonies and Africans played important roles in this process. The role of Africans in the making of colonial war propaganda is particularly evident in the impact of war propaganda on the politics of decolonization in British West Africa. Although 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, it also provided new opportunities for emergent West African elites to articulate nationalist demands on a world stage drawing on the same discourses of self-determination that underscored British war propaganda. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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