"Läuft Afrika der EWG davon?" The Role of European Integration in the Colonization and Decolonization of Africa during the late 1950s and early 1960s
This project sheds new light on the relation between EU integration and colonialism and decolonization in Africa during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It issues from the applicant’s previous research that has established the Eurafrican project, or the unification of the EEC (today’s EU) and colonial Africa into one single association regime, as constitutive of the founding of the EEC in 1957. A dominant topic in its time, but neglected in today’s scholarship, Eurafrica shows that the history of the EU, colonialism and decolonization are far more intrinsically related than has previously been understood. The project interrogates two main questions: (1) How did the architects of the EEC perceive of the future durability of the colonial order at the time of the EEC’s founding in 1957? Provided that African decolonization was a fact already in the early 1960, the project goes on to ask (2) how this would impact on the EEC’s newly established colonial association regime. What characterized the discussions, both in the EEC and Africa, concerning the prospects for a reformed association regime? We know that the regime would survive decolonization, being reconstituted in the Yaoundé convention in 1963. We know very little, though, about the developments and outlooks during the pivotal years between 1957 and 1963. The project thus contributes new knowledge about the crucial interregnum in which the future relations between the EEC and a large part of Africa was debated and decided.
Final report
Project’s Purpose and Development, and How It Has Been Carried Out
In its original design, the project aimed to interrogate two main questions: (1) How did the architects of the EEC perceive of the future durability of the colonial order at the time of the EEC’s founding in 1957? Provided that African decolonization was a fact already in the early 1960, the project goes on to ask (2) how this would impact on the EEC’s newly established colonial association regime.
For the most part, the project has retained its focus concerning the first question but has postponed the second one. It has also modified its methods and materials, focusing more on the political and intellectual debates as these were carried out in newspapers and academic work. However, towards the end of the project period I have been able to collect archival materials, although not to the extent that I originally planned. This was done at the European Union’s Historical Archives in Florence when I held a Simone Veil Fellowship at the EUI’s Schuman Centre for Advanced Study in Florence (October 2023–January 2024). Moreover, the project has been compelled to put more emphasis on theoretical issues. This is not a new project objective per se but flows from the project’s interest in the implications of the self-evident durability with which Europe’s colonial ownership of Africa was perceived from 1945 until the establishment of the EEC in 1957. It also corresponds to the projects interest in European integration’s relationship to geopolitics, and how the project responded to the postwar geopolitical conjuncture, in which colonial projects, processes of decolonization, Cold War entrenchment and African independence were at stake.
The Project’s Three Most Important Results
1. Through my work with the project, it has become obvious that the relationship between postwar European integration and the future of colonialism cannot be understood in isolation from the larger political, geopolitical and geo-economic world developments of the postwar era. One of the project’s most important results is precisely to demonstrate how and why my location of postwar European integration in the context of colonialism holds the key to also locating European integration in this larger world context.
2. This, then, enables another key empirical and theoretical finding of the project. This revolves around European integration’s approach to the nation-state and the prospect of the world transforming into a universalized nation-state system, regulated by international law through the UN and void of imperil/colonial states. What I argue here is that, first, many of the Western European states after 1945 should not be conceived of as nation-states, which is the common approach, but as imperial/colonial states. Such a re-conceptualization, I demonstrate, has significant theoretical implications. The postwar period was not national but rather imperial or colonial. Hence, there was no general nation-state system in place, and the creation of the United Nations in 1945 had little intention, initially, of changing that fact (Mazower 2009). In 1962, the Secretary of the Council of Europe’s Economic Committee, Uwe Kitzinger (1962: 98), commented on the Rome Treaty’s colonial association provisions, saying: “They were based on a largely static conception of the political relations between the African countries and the metropolitan Member States. In the past three years that relationship has evolved beyond all expectations.” Writing a few years later, Carol Ann Cosgrove (1969: 77) also stressed this crucial point: “The treaty was drafted at a time when rapid decolonization was discounted by the European metropoles, with the result that no reference was made to the possible attainment of sovereign independence by the associate except in the case of Somaliland.” For the European project, then, the plan was to have African colonialism continue for the foreseeable future. Although forgotten today, a universal nation-state system was thus something many European statesmen fought tooth and nail to prevent from materializing, as seen in the numerous wars that colonial powers waged in the postwar period – all for the purpose of preserving the colonial system and preventing the advent of the nation-state system. In a speech on Algeria before the UN in February 1957, France’s foreign minister, socialist Christian Pineau, spoke of ‘the so-called right to independence’ and of ‘the right of peoples to self-determination’ as ‘a sort of mystic aim of the international organization’ [i.e. the UN] that ‘would end in multiplying the number of states at a time when, on the contrary, the peoples should be brought together in a common action’. Just like so many other European statesmen, the French foreign minister was apprehensive about the proliferation of states that would result from decolonization. For Pineau and France, therefore, ‘[t]he most important thing is to promote throughout the world an acceptable standard of living which would enable men of all countries to enjoy true liberty and enable the nations to become something other than states.’ ‘On the day’, Pineau concluded his speech, ‘when a large common market – in which the overseas territories will be associated – has been created, she [France] would like to promote the formation of a Eurafrican whole. Europe in its entirety, bringing to Africa its capital and its techniques, should enable the immense African continent to become an essential factor in world politics.’ (The New York Times 1957) That Statesmen’s rejection of a nation-state system had a solid backing in large parts of the scholarly community well into the 1960s is largely forgotten today. As E. H. Carr (1945: 51–2) put it: “We shall not again see a Europe of twenty, and a world of more than sixty, independent sovereign states […] [T]he world will have to accommodate itself to the emergence of a few great multinational units in which power will be mainly concentrated”. “The bare fact’, Carr claimed (1945: 25), of there being “in the world more than sixty, political units claiming the status of independent sovereign states goes far by itself to explain the aggravation of the evils of nationalism.” Some twenty years later, no one less than Stanley Hoffmann (1966: 862) could sum up the outcome, and he did not like what he saw: “In the nuclear age, the fragmentation of the world into countless units, each of which has a claim to independence, is obviously dangerous for peace and illogical for welfare”.
3. As a third finding, it is crucial to note that in, initially, denying independent statehood to the African colonies, Western European states – whether as imperial/colonial states or as members of the EEC – were also refusing to become nation-states themselves. Hence, it is not enough to understand decolonization as the folding of European empires and the birth of nominally independent states in the former colonies. Losing their imperial privilege did not only spell the end of imperial statehood; it also entailed the beginning of national statehood in Europe, or at least the undesirable prospect thereof. It was undesirable, of course, because it would imply a loss of influence and status. The EU and Eurafrica was initially conceived by many as a means to preserve Western Europe’s global clout by simultaneously preventing self-determination in Africa and rescuing imperial statehood in Europe. Once this was no longer tenable, the EU’s pooling of sovereignty still offered its member states protection from some of the inherent geopolitical and geo-economic risks implied by independent nation statehood. Not the least could EU member states go on to reap the benefits of the neo-colonial association regime between the EU and newly independent African states, previously annexed to the EU via the Rome Treaty’s colonial association.
Conclusions
The Treaty of Rome in 1957 was not the treaty for the “Little Europe” in the superpowers’ Cold War Europe. Rather, it resulted from an attempted geopolitical positioning of “Europe” as an agent in the world. To probe European integration’s strong colonial connection is thus tantamount to a significant expansion of the EU’s historical context. In turn, this methodological disruption – of going beyond the provincial European cold war context – walks in tandem with a vast expansion of the empirical and theoretical setting for the study of postwar European integration. This includes some important implications for our conception of the nation-state, national independence, and the structuring principles for the global order that various forces struggled and negotiated over during the decades following the second world war. The project thus serves to open the field of research into the history of European integration, showing its crucial bearing on the postwar world order, particularly as pertained to Africa and its relations to Europe.
New Research Question
In attending to geopolitics the project has also been developed to accommodate what I conceive of as the long duree of a geopolitics of European unity. This geopolitics peaked in the postwar period but commenced already in the period preceding the first world war. Today, it is experiencing a revival under Ursula von der Leyen’s self-appointed “geopolitical European Commission”. The project has thus incorporated – both empirically and theoretically – also today’s developments concerning the allegedly existential push to have the EU embrace power politics and develop a ‘strategic autonomy’, both vis-à-vis other global powers and with respect to its own ‘neighbourhood’, where Africa looms large.
Dissemination
The project’s results have been disseminated through publications, invited lectures, conferences, media coverage and interviews. Collaboration with other parties have taken the form of one international conference organization, fellowship (EUI), and numerous international teaching assignments and talks.
In its original design, the project aimed to interrogate two main questions: (1) How did the architects of the EEC perceive of the future durability of the colonial order at the time of the EEC’s founding in 1957? Provided that African decolonization was a fact already in the early 1960, the project goes on to ask (2) how this would impact on the EEC’s newly established colonial association regime.
For the most part, the project has retained its focus concerning the first question but has postponed the second one. It has also modified its methods and materials, focusing more on the political and intellectual debates as these were carried out in newspapers and academic work. However, towards the end of the project period I have been able to collect archival materials, although not to the extent that I originally planned. This was done at the European Union’s Historical Archives in Florence when I held a Simone Veil Fellowship at the EUI’s Schuman Centre for Advanced Study in Florence (October 2023–January 2024). Moreover, the project has been compelled to put more emphasis on theoretical issues. This is not a new project objective per se but flows from the project’s interest in the implications of the self-evident durability with which Europe’s colonial ownership of Africa was perceived from 1945 until the establishment of the EEC in 1957. It also corresponds to the projects interest in European integration’s relationship to geopolitics, and how the project responded to the postwar geopolitical conjuncture, in which colonial projects, processes of decolonization, Cold War entrenchment and African independence were at stake.
The Project’s Three Most Important Results
1. Through my work with the project, it has become obvious that the relationship between postwar European integration and the future of colonialism cannot be understood in isolation from the larger political, geopolitical and geo-economic world developments of the postwar era. One of the project’s most important results is precisely to demonstrate how and why my location of postwar European integration in the context of colonialism holds the key to also locating European integration in this larger world context.
2. This, then, enables another key empirical and theoretical finding of the project. This revolves around European integration’s approach to the nation-state and the prospect of the world transforming into a universalized nation-state system, regulated by international law through the UN and void of imperil/colonial states. What I argue here is that, first, many of the Western European states after 1945 should not be conceived of as nation-states, which is the common approach, but as imperial/colonial states. Such a re-conceptualization, I demonstrate, has significant theoretical implications. The postwar period was not national but rather imperial or colonial. Hence, there was no general nation-state system in place, and the creation of the United Nations in 1945 had little intention, initially, of changing that fact (Mazower 2009). In 1962, the Secretary of the Council of Europe’s Economic Committee, Uwe Kitzinger (1962: 98), commented on the Rome Treaty’s colonial association provisions, saying: “They were based on a largely static conception of the political relations between the African countries and the metropolitan Member States. In the past three years that relationship has evolved beyond all expectations.” Writing a few years later, Carol Ann Cosgrove (1969: 77) also stressed this crucial point: “The treaty was drafted at a time when rapid decolonization was discounted by the European metropoles, with the result that no reference was made to the possible attainment of sovereign independence by the associate except in the case of Somaliland.” For the European project, then, the plan was to have African colonialism continue for the foreseeable future. Although forgotten today, a universal nation-state system was thus something many European statesmen fought tooth and nail to prevent from materializing, as seen in the numerous wars that colonial powers waged in the postwar period – all for the purpose of preserving the colonial system and preventing the advent of the nation-state system. In a speech on Algeria before the UN in February 1957, France’s foreign minister, socialist Christian Pineau, spoke of ‘the so-called right to independence’ and of ‘the right of peoples to self-determination’ as ‘a sort of mystic aim of the international organization’ [i.e. the UN] that ‘would end in multiplying the number of states at a time when, on the contrary, the peoples should be brought together in a common action’. Just like so many other European statesmen, the French foreign minister was apprehensive about the proliferation of states that would result from decolonization. For Pineau and France, therefore, ‘[t]he most important thing is to promote throughout the world an acceptable standard of living which would enable men of all countries to enjoy true liberty and enable the nations to become something other than states.’ ‘On the day’, Pineau concluded his speech, ‘when a large common market – in which the overseas territories will be associated – has been created, she [France] would like to promote the formation of a Eurafrican whole. Europe in its entirety, bringing to Africa its capital and its techniques, should enable the immense African continent to become an essential factor in world politics.’ (The New York Times 1957) That Statesmen’s rejection of a nation-state system had a solid backing in large parts of the scholarly community well into the 1960s is largely forgotten today. As E. H. Carr (1945: 51–2) put it: “We shall not again see a Europe of twenty, and a world of more than sixty, independent sovereign states […] [T]he world will have to accommodate itself to the emergence of a few great multinational units in which power will be mainly concentrated”. “The bare fact’, Carr claimed (1945: 25), of there being “in the world more than sixty, political units claiming the status of independent sovereign states goes far by itself to explain the aggravation of the evils of nationalism.” Some twenty years later, no one less than Stanley Hoffmann (1966: 862) could sum up the outcome, and he did not like what he saw: “In the nuclear age, the fragmentation of the world into countless units, each of which has a claim to independence, is obviously dangerous for peace and illogical for welfare”.
3. As a third finding, it is crucial to note that in, initially, denying independent statehood to the African colonies, Western European states – whether as imperial/colonial states or as members of the EEC – were also refusing to become nation-states themselves. Hence, it is not enough to understand decolonization as the folding of European empires and the birth of nominally independent states in the former colonies. Losing their imperial privilege did not only spell the end of imperial statehood; it also entailed the beginning of national statehood in Europe, or at least the undesirable prospect thereof. It was undesirable, of course, because it would imply a loss of influence and status. The EU and Eurafrica was initially conceived by many as a means to preserve Western Europe’s global clout by simultaneously preventing self-determination in Africa and rescuing imperial statehood in Europe. Once this was no longer tenable, the EU’s pooling of sovereignty still offered its member states protection from some of the inherent geopolitical and geo-economic risks implied by independent nation statehood. Not the least could EU member states go on to reap the benefits of the neo-colonial association regime between the EU and newly independent African states, previously annexed to the EU via the Rome Treaty’s colonial association.
Conclusions
The Treaty of Rome in 1957 was not the treaty for the “Little Europe” in the superpowers’ Cold War Europe. Rather, it resulted from an attempted geopolitical positioning of “Europe” as an agent in the world. To probe European integration’s strong colonial connection is thus tantamount to a significant expansion of the EU’s historical context. In turn, this methodological disruption – of going beyond the provincial European cold war context – walks in tandem with a vast expansion of the empirical and theoretical setting for the study of postwar European integration. This includes some important implications for our conception of the nation-state, national independence, and the structuring principles for the global order that various forces struggled and negotiated over during the decades following the second world war. The project thus serves to open the field of research into the history of European integration, showing its crucial bearing on the postwar world order, particularly as pertained to Africa and its relations to Europe.
New Research Question
In attending to geopolitics the project has also been developed to accommodate what I conceive of as the long duree of a geopolitics of European unity. This geopolitics peaked in the postwar period but commenced already in the period preceding the first world war. Today, it is experiencing a revival under Ursula von der Leyen’s self-appointed “geopolitical European Commission”. The project has thus incorporated – both empirically and theoretically – also today’s developments concerning the allegedly existential push to have the EU embrace power politics and develop a ‘strategic autonomy’, both vis-à-vis other global powers and with respect to its own ‘neighbourhood’, where Africa looms large.
Dissemination
The project’s results have been disseminated through publications, invited lectures, conferences, media coverage and interviews. Collaboration with other parties have taken the form of one international conference organization, fellowship (EUI), and numerous international teaching assignments and talks.