World War I was truly a global conflict, spanning from Europe to Turkey to Africa. In Africa, like elsewhere, people became disillusioned with European colonialism and harbored notions of freedom and self-determination. The war forced liberal regimes to rethink mass society and find solutions to economic problems. By the eve of World War II, the strength of autocratic regimes called into question the value of building nations on liberal ideas of limited government and individual initiative.

Economic and Political Modernities

In the 1920s and 1930s, many visions of modernity competed. Common to most of these visions, however, was the predominance of mass production, mass consumption, and mass culture. The Great Depression called these into question, however, leading to the emergence of three new visions of modernity: liberalism, authoritarianism, and anti-colonialism. Liberalism, which wed capitalism and democracy, suffered during the Great Depression as economies collapsed. While many considered alternatives, liberalism survived by granting more power to the state. Authoritarian regimes exalted the state by subordinating the individual and rejecting democracy in favor of authoritarian control and government distribution of "national" resources. Anti-colonialism rejected liberalism, calling it a mechanism of imperialism, and sought the expulsion of foreign powers from native lands. Modernity, after all, first required independence.

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