Book. It is the story of an idea, Eurafrique, which marked its time, before completely disappearing from public debate, and which two researchers unearthed a century later to explain the construction of Europe in reverse of what is usually advanced. In their test Eurafrica. The colonial origins of the European UnionPeo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, both professors at Linköping University (Sweden), attempt to deconstruct ” the myth “ of a European construction based solely on the will of “to foster peace and cooperation and [de] thus defeating nationalist rivalries and imperial aspirations”.
Starting from the observation that “attempts to unify Europe have always coincided with efforts to stabilize, reform and reinvent the colonial system in Africa”they put forward, on the contrary, the idea of a “imperialist project”, that of building a strong Europe on the exploitation of African resources. So much so that France has made the integration of its empire, in particular Algeria and its possessions in sub-Saharan Africa, a sine qua non condition for its participation in the European project and its signature of the Treaty of Rome. A utopian project of the 1920s, Eurafrique became “a political reality in the 1950s” with “the founding in 1957 of the European Economic Community, ancestor of the current European Union”, which includes, in addition to the signatory countries, “the principal colonial possessions of the Member States”.
Be less dependent on the United States
The great force of the demonstration of Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson is based on the meticulous examination of a quantity of documents (political archives, newspapers of the time, books, reflections of thinkers and researchers of yesterday and today …) and the study, in detail, of bilateral or multilateral negotiations between the future member countries; which allows them to translate the concerns of this historical period, but sometimes gives the impression of an analysis that goes in circles.
It nevertheless emerges that at all stages of European construction, the question of the integration of colonial possessions arose very clearly because, despite the competition between the different empires (mainly between the United Kingdom and France) , it appeared that by integrating Africa into its construction and by pooling investments for the extraction and exploitation of its resources, Europe could play on an equal footing with the American and Soviet giants and be less dependent on the States. United in the Cold War.
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