Colonial control of elite formation failed because elite nationalism fed the Black radical tradition

Evidence

It soon became clear, however, that the colonial governments had moved too late. “Elite nationalism,” one of the first political expressions of the Black petit bourgeoisie, was already propelling complements of the class into the older, more profound tradition of radicalism. Elliot Skinner would recall: By the 1920s and 1930s, conflict and incoherence had spread into almost all aspects of life in colonial Africa. There appeared a group of Africans who had acquired the cultures of the colonizers and considered themselves to be British, French, and Portuguese. They had learned to consider Europe as home and had adopted European clothing, speech, and mannerisms. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 858

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s goal of tracing the Black radical tradition’s rise: here Robinson locates elite nationalism as one of its early political expressions.