South Africa: Empires, Nations and the Third World

The decolonisation of Africa from the 1950s saw the irruption on the world stage of multiple, new nation-states. Between 1951 (Libyan independence) and 1994 (the end of apartheid in South Africa), 50 states emerged. Most dramatic were the months between January 1960 and November of the same year. In eleven months, 17 new states. By the end of 1962, France's African Empire was in tatters.