Bringing Africa as a 'Dowry to Europe' : European Integration and the Eurafrican Project, 1920–1960

• This article 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 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. 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. Indeed, there is strong evidence to support that these ideas were instrumental in the actual, diplomatic and political constitution of the EEC, or of Europe as a political subject. The article discusses the conspicuous absence of these matters from scholarship on European integration and its historical origins and trajectory. It also notes that it is equally neglected in postcolonial studies, which should be able to provide the theoretical and historical tools to engage with the complex and instructive issues with which the Eurafrican project and its intimate links to the history of European integration confront today’s scholars.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Globaliseringsstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Globalisation Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Eurafrica

European Integration

Colonialism

Interwar and Postwar Geopolitics

Research on Europe

Forskning om Europa

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)