At the Edge of the Modern?: Diplomacy, Public Relations, and Media Practices During Houphouët-Boigny\u27s 1962 Visit to the United States

Toward the end of the first decade after the decolonization of most African countries, there emerged a scholarly polemic about the weight of bureaucratic politics in the making of foreign policy in the Third World. A mirror of the reigning modernization paradigm that informed most postwar area studies and social sciences, the discussion unintentionally indexed the narcissism of a hegemonic discourse on political development and statecraft. Graham Allison and Morton Halperin—the original proponents of the bureaucratic model—implied in their largely U.S.-centric model that such a paradigm was not applicable to non-industrialized countries since the newly decolonized countries, for the most part, lacked the institutional/organizational base and political tradition needed to conduct a modern foreign policy. Félix Houphouët- Boigny—leader of the newly independent Ivory Coast—was hardly mentioned in the scholarly debates on the bureaucratic model. Yet one can use the conjuncture of his visit to the United States in May 1962 to explore the arguments developed by the protagonists in the polemic that ensued the publication of the Allison-Halperin theory

An Unconventional Challenge to Apartheid: The Ivorian Dialogue Diplomacy with South Africa, 1960-1978

This article focuses on the dialogue diplomacy that Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny initiated in the late 1960s to engage apartheid South Africa. Although contemporary observers and subsequent scholars (have) derided the scheme as an act of acquiescence and even betrayal, I argue that Ivory Coast\u27s dialogue diplomacy was neither accommodationist nor dependent on the prodding of neocolonial powers such as France. A Pan-Africanist extension of the home-grown neotraditional practice of Dialogue ivoirienne, the diplomatic initiative never got the backing of other African states. A close analysis of the Ivory Coast\u27s maneuvers in the context of an increasing radicalization of the anti-apartheid movement sheds a new light on the complexity of the transnational politics to defeat apartheid

Courting American Capital: Public Relations and the Business of Selling Ivorian Capitalism in the U.S., 1960-1980

This chapter is an invitation to reimagine the roles assigned to players in the history of capitalism on the global stage. It challenges aspects of the historiography of capitalism in the twentieth century, which tend to center on historical actors and institutions of the Global North. Even when actors in the Global South are discussed, it is usually to portray them as passive victims of an intractable system. By focusing on the Ivory Coast and its economic diplomacy toward the United States, I seek to destabilize this general picture

Rebirth of a Strategic Continent?: Problematizing Africa as a Geostrategic Zone

At a time when the U.S. Department of Defense is putting the finishing touches to the establishment of a military command for Africa (known as AFRICOM) and the People’s Republic of China’s influence on the continent seems to be on the rise, a detour through the history of America’s past geographical imaginations of Africa appears as a necessity. This is especially crucial since the current constructions of the African continent as a strategic place in both policy and military circles seems to echo the geodiscursive representations of Africa during the Second World War. In fact, it was in the early 1940s that Africa publicly ceased to be the place of safari that past or sitting American presidents toured and became a continent endowed with a strategic significance. I argue in the lines that follow that American geographer-diplomats and politically-minded cartographers played a key role in this shift. More significantly, I suggest that global historical forces and developments provided the context to understand 2 this attitudinal change among American decision-makers, geostrategists, and academics. Finally, I recommend that Africanist geographers in academia engage the many (past and present) parallel geographic epistemologies regarding Africa, including the ways of seeing and the body of cartographic knowledge about the African continent that military and/or intelligence services and institutions have produced over the years, both in times of war and peace

‘Mightier Than Marx’: Hassoldt Davis and American Cold War Politics in Postwar Ivory Coast

Using the travels of Hassoldt Davis in Ivory Coast to explore the global Cold War in French West Africa in the 1950s, this article argues that the main line of confrontation in the postwar era did not always pit Americans against Russians. In many instances, the struggle for the mind and soul of Africans was between the Americans and the French. The study highlights the role of everyday technology in the expansion of the American informal empire. By focusing on Davis and the significance of low-tech artifacts, the article suggests that in our scrutiny of Cold War science/technology, we need to supplement the study of the various production regimes of consumer goods with a comparable research on consumption and how they mediated the daily battles of the era. Such approach not only underscores the historical reality of the ‘social life of things’, but also gives agency to non-state actors as both users of Cold War technoscience and as participants in the politics that informed its mobilization on the world stage. Besides bringing Francophone Africa in the historiography of US–Africa relations, the article demonstrates a convergence of vision among American consular agents, US transnational corporations and an idiosyncratic travel writer

Triangulating a Modernization Experiment: The United States, France and the Making of the Kossou Project in Central Ivory Coast

Toward the end of the 1960s, authorities in the Ivory Coast decided to build the Kossou Dam, a hydro-electric dam on the Bandama River near the geographic center of the Francophone country. Initially conceived as a technopolitical measure to meet the growing energy demand of the most economically successful country of France\u27s former colonies, the damming experiment soon emerged as a multipurpose regional development project aimed at correcting the regional disparities that tarnished the Ivory Coast\u27s phenomenal economic growth. This article focuses on the Kossou modernization experience and the sociopolitical transformations that it caused. I argue that the nationalist enthusiasm that followed the country\u27s independence in 1960 all the way through the first decade of postcolonial nation-building provided the Ivorian authorities with an opportunity to flesh out their electrified vision of their country\u27s future

Featured Piece

This year the General Editors continued the tradition started last year by creating a feature piece to show our appreciation for the History Department. We selected four professors from the faculty to answer a question about history: what figure/event/idea inspires your interest in history? Reading their responses helped give us insight into the thoughts of these brilliant minds and further help us understand their passion for the subject we all share a common love and interest in. We hope that you enjoy reading their responses as much as we did. The four members of the faculty we spoke with are Dr. Abou Bamba, Dr. William Bowman, Dr. David Hadley, and Magdalena Sánchez

Qu\u27est-ce que la postcolonie? Contribution à un débat francophone trop afrocentré

Cet essai n’a rien d’une élaboration philosophique. Même si la question du titre fait songer à un Kant du « Was ist Aufklärung ? », un Sartre de Qu’est-ce la littérature ? ou encore à un Foucault de « Qu’est-ce que les lumières? ». Il a moins la prétention d’être un exercice théorique. Encore que les discussions sur la postcolonialité ne le sont guère que très rarement. Plutôt, ce texte est la contribution d’un américaniste, observateur de surcroît des sociétés et espaces publics francoafricains de l’après Deuxième Guerre mondiale ; contribution à un débat initié— il y a quelques temps déjà, par A. Waberi dans la revue Notre librairie. De quoi s’agit-il? Dans sa tentative de caractérisation des écrivains africains francophones, l’écrivain cum critique littéraire djiboutien notait à propos de ce qu’il croit être la dernière génération de ces auteurs ceux qu’il nomme les « enfants de la postcolonie »: C’est toujours une gageure que de prétendre définir un phénomène générationnel et une école littéraire. À défaut d’avoir la science infuse, nous nous contenterons de relever quelques traits communs à une vingtaine d’écrivains africains vivants pour la plupart en France. Est-ce suffisant pour parler d’une véritable génération ? Il est difficile d’être catégorique, mais nous inclinons à penser qu’il y a là quelque chose de nouveau et susceptible d’attirer l’œil du critique. Pour le reste, le débat ne fait que commencer (Waberi 1998:11). [excerpt

Conspicuous, Yet Invisible: Migration, Whiteness and the French Residents of Ivory Coast, 1950–1985

This article focuses on the recent history of French residents in (post)colonial Ivory Coast. I argue that the majority of the French candidates for expatriation to the territory were not fundamentally different from other migrants, mostly Africans, who relocated to the West African country to improve their chances for a better life. Although the French have been invisible in the scholarly literature on immigration to Ivory Coast, largely due to the mystique of their whiteness, they were quite visible in the local socio-demographic landscape. The essay illustrates the benefits of a renew and robust engagement with the statistical fact social structures, and historical privileges of these transnational white tribes of Africa. More generally, it suggests that people from the Global North have consistently migrated to the Global South as both temporary migrants and long-term immigrants

Mémoires épistémiques et pouvoir d’experts dans une postcolonie africaine: Le cas de l’usage des savoirs africanistes par l’ORSTOM en Côte d’Ivoire

Partant du constat que l’Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer (ORSTOM) s’est impose par son travail de recherche appliquee comme le concepteur primordial de la planification du developpement en Cote d’Ivoire a la fin des annees soixante, cet article montre que la mobilisation du souvenir des discours institues en science (ou memoires epistemiques) par les chercheurs de l’ORSTOM y a joue pour beaucoup. En se reappropriant les savoirs africanistes laisses par leurs predecesseurs que leur acces privilegie a la “bibliotheque coloniale” a rendu possible, les orstomiens en poste dans la postcolonie ivoirienne ont reussi a supplanter non seulement les chercheurs etrangers (americains surtout), mais aussi les experts francais des bureaux d’etudes et cabinets prives. Le succes de ses chercheurs a rendu necessaire l’institutionnalisation des sciences humaines de l’ORSTOM en Cote d’Ivoire