Anglo-Japanese Collaboration about Africa in Early 1960s: The Search for ‘Complementarity’ in the Middle of Decolonisation

By examining British and Japanese archival sources, this article brings alive the discourse on Japan–Africa relations in the early 1960s and evokes, on the one hand, the dilemmas surrounding Japan's attempts to expand its economic interests in a decolonising Africa and, on the other hand, the efforts of Britain to hold on to its interests in the region. In essence, the research shows how Japan kick-started its economic relations with the African countries in the post-war era and the initiative to ‘enrol’ the services of Britain in the process. This article also shows how keen Whitehall, on the whole, was about collaborating with Japan about Africa in search of complementary interests, perhaps along the same lines as in Southeast Asia in the 1950s. Eventually, Whitehall became exasperated about the initiative, not least because it felt that it had made all the running and the Japanese had contributed nothing.