Building Eurafrica: Reviving Colonialism through European Integration, 1920-1960

This paper examines the history of the ‘Eurafrican project’ as it evolved from the Pan‐ European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (EEC) (i.e. today’s EU) in the late 1950s. As we show, practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa’s incorporation into the European enterprise as a central objective. As so much of the scholarly, political and journalistic accounts at the time testify to, European integration was inextricably bound up with a Eurafrican project. According to the intellectual, political and institutional discourse on Eurafrica—or the fate of Europe’s colonial enterprise—a future European community presupposed the transformation of the strictly national colonial projects into a joint European colonization of Africa. There is strong evidence to support that this project was instrumental in the actual, diplomatic and political constitution of the EEC, or of Europe as a political subject. According to our thesis, the origins of the EU cannot be separated from the perceived necessity to preserve and reinvigorate the colonial system. On a second level the paper also introduces a broader historiographic problematic in which we position Eurafrica as the wider but by now forgotten formation that shaped Europe and Africa and their relations to one another in the greater part of the twentieth century. Eurafrica conditioned both the integration of Europe and the political landscape in postcolonial Africa. We are thus able to shift the terrain upon which most if not all scholarly analyses of the political, economic and ideological developments on the two continents have taken place up until now. Eurafrica is the forgotten geopolitical context that must be reconstructed in order for us to resolve a set of crucial historical and political problems. Questioning the historical framework usually employed in EU studies, our intervention emphasizes the radically different geopolitical designs for the postwar world order that was encoded in the Eurafrican project. Finally, we also show how these Eurafrican designs continue to influence current relations between Europe and Africa

Eurafrica

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. In order to think theoretically about our global age it is important to understand how the global has been conceived historically. 'Eurafrica' was an intellectual endeavor and political project that from the 1920s saw Europe's future survival - its continued role in history - as completely bound up with Europe's successful merger with Africa. In its time the concept of Eurafrica was tremendously influential in the process of European integration. Today the project is largely forgotten, yet the idea continues to influence EU policy towards its African 'partner'. The book will recover a critical conception of the nexus between Europe and Africa - a relationship of significance across the humanities and social sciences. In assessing this historical concept the authors shed light on the process of European integration, African decolonization and the current conflictual relationship between Europe and Africa

Eurafrica

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. In order to think theoretically about our global age it is important to understand how the global has been conceived historically. 'Eurafrica' was an intellectual endeavor and political project that from the 1920s saw Europe's future survival - its continued role in history - as completely bound up with Europe's successful merger with Africa. In its time the concept of Eurafrica was tremendously influential in the process of European integration. Today the project is largely forgotten, yet the idea continues to influence EU policy towards its African 'partner'. The book will recover a critical conception of the nexus between Europe and Africa - a relationship of significance across the humanities and social sciences. In assessing this historical concept the authors shed light on the process of European integration, African decolonization and the current conflictual relationship between Europe and Africa

Europas plantage? Afrikas plats i EU:s historia

This essay describes the history of the Eurafrican project as it evolved from the Pan-European movement in the 1920s to its institutionalization in the European Economic Community (i.e. today’s EU) in the late 1950s. By way of conclusion, the article also discusses how this history affects current relations between Africa and the EU. As shown in the article practically all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration during this period placed Africa’s incorporation into the European enterprise as a central objective. European integration, it is argued, was thus inextricably bound up with a Eurafrican project. According to the geopolitical discourse on Eurafrica that became politically operative in the aftermath of World War II, a future European community presupposed the transformation of the strictly national colonial projects into a joint European colonization of Africa. Indeed, there is strong evidence to support that these ideas were instrumental in the actual, diplomatic and political constitution of the EU, or of Europe as a political subject. As the article shows, the history of Eurafrica, which is largely ignored in scholarship on the EU as well as in colonial studies, cannot be understood within a “continentalist” framework, but prompts a reconceptualization of the historical relation Africa and Europe

Imperialisms Past and Present in EU Economic Relations with North Africa

The EU is actively pursuing Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTAs) as part of its trade and aid relations with former colonies in North Africa. Utilizing the discourse of pro-poor business growth and win-win free trade, the EU insists that North African countries must acquiesce to DCFTA liberalization to achieve sustainable development. This article critiques the paternalism of EU actors amidst their focus on completing these controversial DCFTAs. Drawing upon Nkrumah's and Fanon's articulation of the concept of neocolonialism, it argues that the EU is cementing colonial-style patterns of production via iniquitous trade and aid arrangements. Moreover, the article illustrates that EU elites in their justification of the DCFTAs are replicating the colonial-era discourse surrounding Eurafrica and the alleged economic “complementarity” and inevitable “interdependence” of the European and African continents: an amnesiac Europe thus simultaneously draws upon European colonial imaginaries in the justification of neocolonial DCFTAs while downplaying, and forgetting, the regressive legacies of colonial trade relations. The article also demonstrates how certain North African campaigners are already drawing attention to the neocolonial contours of the DCFTAs in order to delegitimise these free trade vehicles vis-à-vis North African and European public opinion

A Superabundance of Contradictions : The European Union’s Post-Amsterdam Policies on Migrant ‘Integration’, Labour Immigration, Asylum, and Illegal Immigration

The agreements reached within the frameworks of the Amsterdam Treaty and the Tampere European Council in 1999 would set off a flurry of activity in the areas of EU immigration, asylum and migrant/minority ‘integration’ policy. In conjunction with these policy areas moving up the EU agenda, moreover, this rapidly growing activity would expand well beyond the confines of the Amsterdam and Tampere programmes. The European Commission’s bold move to declare an end to the era of‘zero’ extra-Community labour immigration, as well as the expanding ‘externalization’ of the EU’s immigration and asylum policies to third countries, are just two of several examples highlighting this dynamic development. This paper focuses on the unfolding EU policies in the fields of ‘integration’, anti discrimination, immigration, and asylum. In terms of demarcations, it covers the development up until the conclusion of the Tampere Programme (1999–2004), leaving off at the beginning of its multi-annual successor agenda, the Hague Programme (2005–10). The examination proceeds through a double movement, surveying and analysing both internally and externally directed policies, as well as their intimate and often contradictory interplay. The paper sets out by scrutinizing supranational initiatives in the field of migrant/minority integration and anti-discrimination,focusing specifically on the strong interaction of this enterprise with labour-market policy and the issues of citizenship, social exclusion, and ‘Europeanvalues’. It then goes on to explore the European Commission’s objectives and assumptions concerning its calls for a sizeable increase in labour migration from third countries. Besides relating this to the internal requirements of the EU’s transforming labour market, it also discusses the external ramifications of the EU’s developing labour migration policy. The remaining sections scrutinize the EU’s emerging asylum policy. It attends, inter alia, to the EU’s ever-widening smorgasbord of restrictive asylum instruments and security-oriented immigration policies, which, as the paper goes on to argue, together serve to transform the right of asylum into a problem of ‘illegal immigration’. Above all, this predicament is discussed in relation to the growing importance of immigration and asylum matters in the EU’s external relations

Decolonization and the spectre of the nation‐state

Gurminder Bhambra's Annual Lecture points the way to aparadigm shift in how the social sciences should approachthe nation-state,both historically and in our own times.That is to say, perceiving of Britain historically as a nation-stateor as an imperial state will make all the difference;and, as Bhambra demonstrates, it is precisely the failureto grasp the imperial fact that prevents us from grasping‘the shared histories that have configured our present’.This article reflects on the crucial imperial fact outlined byBhambra, and it applies its radical consequences for ourapproach to the broader Western European scene andthe world at large in the postwar period. Our contemporarynation-statesystem, it is argued, is not the inventionof Westphalia and European objectives, but rather theproduct of decolonization and thus a reaction and alternativeto the European designs for the modern world order,in general, and the postwar order, in particular. In relationto this, the article also explains how Bhambra's work helpsestablish a historically informed critique of methodologicalnationalism, as opposed to the many misconceptionsperpetuated by our current theoretical consensus of what‘methodological nationalism’ entails