Europe and its non-European ‘other’, which had underpinned and given meaning to Droit Public de l’Europe.
7. Eurafrica
In the decades leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the project of European integration was envisioned as part of the solution to the problem of ‘modernising’ or ‘reforming’ colonialism. Failing that, European integration became integral to managing the process of decolonisation while securing privileged access to trade and natural resources after formal independence via the creation of ‘special relationships’ and a renewed commitment to a civilising mission now under the term ‘development’.[1] The starkest example, as the rest of this article will demonstrate, is the realisation of the interwar project of Eurafrica, outlined in Part IV of the Treaty of Rome.[2] This project linked European integration, and a turn away from sovereignty within Europe, to the collective assertation of European interests abroad as well as the realisation of Europe’s ‘civilising mission’ in Africa.
The idea of Eurafrica first emerged as a central part of the justification of imperialism and the ‘civilising mission’ in nineteenth-century colonial thought.[3] Eurafrica portrays the fate of Europe and Africa as inherently linked to one another. For both Europe and Africa to prosper, they must unite into a Eurafrican union, a commonwealth.[4] The Eurafrican union, however, was imagined not as a union of equals but rather as a body politic where Europe was the head and Africa the body.[5] The idea of Eurafrica was taken up by some of the interwar proposals for European integration as an integral part of the solution to the problem of Europe’s declining geopolitical status after World War One. A prominent example is Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s 1923 pamphlet Paneuropa, which launched the highly influential Pan-European Union Movement that was supported by intellectuals such as Heinrich and Thomas Mann and politicians such as Winston Churchill, Konrad Adenauer and Aristide Briand.[6] In interwar writings on Eurafrica, Europe and Africa are portrayed as interdependent but in a highly asymmetrical way: whereas Europe needs Africa’s raw materials and vast spaces, Africa is in need of Europe’s technology and capital.[7]
Throughout the interwar period, Eurafrica was portrayed as a ‘new and higher form of colonialism’, which replaced nationalist competition in a scramble for Africa with a new form of collective colonialism.[8] The European empires were no longer capable of controlling the colonial world as individual empires, but they would perhaps be able to control the colonial world
- ↑ On a trip to Congo in 1956, it became clear to Paul-Henry Spaak that an association between the project of European integration and African colonies ‘could offer a viable alternative to violent decolonization’, see Patrick Pasture, Imagining European Unity since 1000 AD (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) 190. For a broader discussion, see Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica 13–6; Kalypso Nicolaïdis, ‘Southern Barbarians? A Post-Colonial Critique of EUniversalism’ in Gabrielle Maas, Berny Sebe and Kalypso Nicolaïdis (eds), Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (IB Tauris 2014); Guy Martin, ‘Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica: Neo-Colonialism or Pan-Africanism?’ 20 (1982) The Journal of Modern African Studies 221, 230–1.
- ↑ As demonstrated by Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, the project of European integration and Eurafrica were intimately connected from the interwar period until the late 1950s. Throughout this period, ‘all of the visions, movements and concrete institutional arrangements working towards European integration made Africa’s incorporation into the European enterprise a central objective’, see Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, ‘Building Eurafrica: Reviving Colonialism through European Integration, 1920–6’ in Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Berny Sèbe and Gabrielle Maas (eds), Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (IB Tauris 2009).
- ↑ Martin, ‘Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica’ 222.
- ↑ Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica 35.
- ↑ Hansen and Jonsson, ‘Building Eurafrica’ 211.
- ↑ Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica 26ff; Hansen and Jonsson, ‘Building Eurafrica’ 211.
- ↑ Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica ch 2.
- ↑ Ibid 33.
