RAYMOND LESLIE BUELL, recently returned from studies in Africa as representative of the Bureau of International Research of Harvard University
"Il est permis de supposer cependant que peut-être un jour l'Europe, expulsée de l'Asie, ou s'étale en ce moment toute son activité industrielle, par l'envahissement progressif et intense de la race jaune, trouvera son dernier point d'appui en cette Afrique qui, de nos jours seulement, ouvre ses sécrets si longtemps gardés, et la nation la plus forte sera celle qui aura su prévoir cet avenir." -- Lieutenant-Colonel Gallieni, "Deux Campagnes au Soudan Français," 1891.
UNTIL the last twenty-five years the continent of Africa, as far as the white man is concerned, has not only been Dark, but in vast areas it has been Deserted. East Africa was occupied only in 1895, and although the French, Dutch, and British maintained trading posts along the West Coast for several centuries, it was only in 1900 -- 1902 that the British annexed the Gold Coast and declared a protectorate over Northern Nigeria; it was only in 1914 that the French succeeded in pacifying the Ivory Coast...
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Many African nations seem hopelessly destitute and anarchic. European nations have the moral obligation and the colonial expertise to give wise succor.
Fifteen years after most of Africa received its independence, Europe is still present and influential in the continent. The European presence has, however, shifted from overt and direct to more subtle forms. While military occupation and sovereign control over African territories have all but been eliminated, political influence, economic preponderance, and cultural conditioning remain. Britain and France, and with them the rest of the European Community, maintain a relatively high level of aid and investment, trade dominance, and a sizable flow of teachers, businessmen, statesmen, tourists and technical assistants. Perhaps most symbolically significant of all, the long-nurtured dream of an institutionalized Eur-African community was finally inaugurated on February 28, 1975, when the convention of trade and cooperation was signed at Lomé between the European Nine and the then-37 independent Black African states (plus nine islands and enclaves in the Caribbean and the Pacific).
Between August 1980 and December 1981, the Polish crisis had an important international dimension. Since the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, however, the political situation in Poland has drastically changed. One might argue that it is now merely the internal concern of that country or, at most, of the Soviet empire. If this be so, Poland must no longer be a matter of particular concern for American foreign policy.

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