Bronwen Manby Introduction The era of decolonisation, as the European powers gradually relinquished control of most of their overseas territories in the 1960s and 70s, marks an apparently obvious turning point, or moment of change, in the history of citizenship law and practice. Decolonisation brought the universalisation of the legal and philosophical concepts of citizenship developed in Europe – but never applied to the majority of residents in their imperial territories. The newly independent states were now deemed to have become ‘nation-states’ according to an imagined European model, in which modern state structures would displace both the imperial administration and the continuing role of pre-colonial institutions in governing the population. The gap common to the age of empires between nationality as an international legal status on the one hand, and the enjoyment of full citizenship rights at national level on the other, was now closed. (Gaps between the status of men and women remained acceptable for some decades longer.) At the same time, the legal regimes for citizenship in the new states were inevitably shaped by the colonial era, perhaps in Africa above all, the focus of this paper. Contemporary African citizenships are framed by colonisation: the carving up of the continent and the imposition or dissolution of political institutions and boundaries without respect for the pre-existing polities; the large-scale expropriation of land; the forced recruitment of labour from one region to another; the immigration of large numbers of workers, traders and settlers from within and without the continent; the racialised categories of membership at the level of each territory; and the intermittent adjustment of borders and jurisdictions among the colonial powers; followed by a sometimes violent and everywhere hasty transition to independence and reimposition of smaller political units. For regulation of the citizenship of the new states, just as Antony Anghie has argued for international law, ‘the enduring consequences of colonialism became a central and inescapable issue’ (Anghie, 2005, p. 197). There are many similarities between Africa and other post-colonial geographies, especially the frequent resilience of colonial institutions and the resentment of those whose presence in a territory is the result of population movements within the former empires. Yet the particular experience of European imperial oppression in Africa created continental dynamics in the imagination and regulation of citizenship that are different from other regions. Struggles for citizenship in independent Africa were shaped by the anti-colonial struggle: by a sense of solidarity with those sharing the fight for liberation, both locally and globally; and by the desire to reverse the racial hierarchy of political and economic power that had existed under empire. At independence, the African continent was an imagined space in many ways more potent than the individual post-colonial state, and this imagination continues to influence citizenship law and policy today. In some ways, therefore, decolonisation marks a more obvious turning point for the history of European frameworks of citizenship in global context, than it does for rules governing membership, participation, and belonging in former colonised states—more disrupted by the arrival of European empires than their departure. We should not, however, over-emphasise the differences between the debates in Africa and in Europe. New political actors have progressively reshaped the frameworks that they inherited, creating multiple different turning points in different countries rather than a single pivot. European borders are also not ‘natural’ but shaped by war and conquest. There are particular challenges created by Africa’s history, but the laws regulating citizenship are shaped by the same debates as exist elsewhere. 1 Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies