Eurafrica (a portmanteau of "Europe" and "Africa") refers to the originally German idea of strategic partnership between Africa and Europe. In the decades before World War II, German supporters of European integration advocated a merger of African colonies as a first step towards a federal Europe.
As a genuine political project, it played a crucial role in the early development of the European Union but was largely forgotten afterwards. In the context of a renewed EU Strategy for Africa, and controversies about a Euromediterranean Partnership, the term has gone through a revival of sorts in recent years.
Overview The term had already been coined by the nineteenth century when most Africa was becoming an integrated part of European empires. It was a theory espoused by some economic policy technocrats such as the Atlantropa vision in the 1920s and the 1930sPolitische Geographien Europas: Annäherungen an ein umstrittenes Konstrukt, Anke Strüver, LIT Verlag Münster, 2005, p.43 (compare the recently failed Desertec project).Hsozcult review (German), Mediterrane Stromvisionen, Von Atlantropa zu DESERTEC? Alexander Gall, in Zeitgeschichte (nach 1945) U. Fraunholz u.a. (Hrsg.): Technology Fiction Technology Fiction. Technische Visionen und Utopien in der Hochmoderne, 1800/2000. Kulturgeschichte der Moderne 10, ed. Fraunholz, Uwe; Woschech, Anke, Bielefeld, Transcript 2012 ISBN, 978-3-8376-2072-6 It then aimed to integrate African colonies providing raw materials with Europe.Thomas Moser: Europäische Integration, Dekolonisation, Eurafrika. Eine historische Analyse über die Entstehungsbedingungen der eurafrikanischen Gemeinschaft von der Weltwirtschaftskrise bis zum Jaunde-Vertrag, 1929-1963., 2000, p. 95. Erich Obst was one of the propagators during World War II.
The 1920s saw Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi founding the first popular movement for a united Europe. His Paneuropean Union saw a Eurafrican alliance using the European colonies as a "dowry"Peo Hansen/Stefan Jonsson: BRINGING AFRICA AS A ‘DOWRY TO EUROPE’. In: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Nr. 13:3, 2011, S. 448f. as important base of Europe's ability to found a third pillar against the Americas and Asia.Caudenhove-Kalergi: Paneuropa-Manifest. Paneuropa. Nr. 9, 1933.Thomas Moser: Europäische Integration, Dekolonisation, Eurafrika. Eine historische Analyse über die Entstehungsbedingungen der eurafrikanischen Gemeinschaft von der Weltwirtschaftskrise bis zum Jaunde-Vertrag, 1929-1963., 2000, p. 104. Coudenhove-Kalergis' belief had racial undertones as he claimed that Eurafrika would combine European high culture and African "primitive" vitalism to benefit both continents.Paneuropa, Band 5, 1929
Luiza Bialasiewicz refers to Karl Haushofer's vision of an "Eurafrican" pan-region as base of the vision of Eurafrica as the most central third of the world.Luiza Bialasiewicz, ed. (2011) Europe in the World: EU Geopolitics and the Making of European Space. Aldershot: Ashgate (Critical Geopolitics Series), p.69
The partnership discourse grew from a mere political and economic exchange to an enhanced relevance attached to the sphere of emotions and sexuality in the interwar period.European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire Volume 11, Issue 2, 2004 Political imagination, sexuality and love in the Eurafrican debate DOI:10.1080/1350748042000240578 Liliana Ellenaa pages 241-272
Eurafrica remained a remote political dream until the end of the World War II. Afterwards, it gained actual political impact as part of the driving forces towards European unity. Given its geographical and legal positioning, the former French territory Algeria was, in the 1950s, the focal point of the French vision of Eurafrique.
Léopold Sédar Senghor's concept of Eurafrique was closely connected with négritude, which put African cultural achievements, including the Sub-Saharan region, on the same level as European ones and saw them as part of the same cultural continuum.Eurafrique as the Future Past of Black France: Sarkozy's Temporal Confusion and Senghor's Postwar Vision / Gary Wilder, in Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness, Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Tyler Stovall, Tyler Edward Stovall, Duke University Press, 26.06.2012 Senghors Élégie pour la Reine de Saba, published in his Élégies majeures in 1976 uses the Queen of Sheba legend as a love poem and a political message. Senghor's use of africanité and négritude involved in including Arab-Berber Africa.Spleth, Janice. The Arabic Constituents of Africanité : Senghor and the Queen of Sheba. Research in African literatures, Winter 2002, vol. 33, no 4, p. 60-75.Review on Muse
The Revolutions of 1989 in the Eastern Bloc led to unforeseen changes and also overtook - albeit temporarily - the traditional interest in closer European-African co-operation. Against the basic foundation narrative, the large European expansion in recent decades had been eastbound and not cross-Mediterranean.
In 2009, a German Christian Democratic think tank, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, noting the lack of a level playing field on political and economic issues, tried to focus on the future spiritual and cultural perspectives of Eurafrica instead.Zukunftsfragen: I @questi del futuro. Eurafrika, Band 3, Markus Krienke, Wilhelm Staudacher, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2009 (Hgg./edd.), (available in German and Italian)
After World War II The foundation of OECD in 1948 started to integrate the colonial realm of Europe.Peo Hansen/Stefan Jonsson: BRINGING AFRICA AS A ‘DOWRY TO EUROPE’. In: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Nr. 13:3, 2011, S. 451.Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEC): Investments fin Overseas Territories in Africa, South of the Sahara., 1951, S.20. The Hague Congress (1948) laid the foundation of the Council of Europe 1949.Jean-Marie Palayret: Les mouvements proeuropéens et la question de l’Eurafrique, du Congrés de La Haye à la Convention de Yaoundé (1948-1963)., Peo Hansen/Stefan Jonsson: BRINGING AFRICA AS A ‘DOWRY TO EUROPE’. In: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Nr. 13:3, 2011, p. 452. Similar as the Schuman Declaration, which named the development of Africa as a central European task, it involved as well dealings with the European colonies.Marie-Thérèse BITSCH and Gérard BOSSUAT (eds), L'Europe unie et l'Afrique : de l'idée d'Eurafrique à la Convention de Lomé I, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2005Martin Klever: Die EU-Entwicklungspolitik zwischen Anspruch und Realität Europas Verantwortung für den afrikanischen Kontinent., 2006, p. 53. However, the colonial ambitions,compare titles like 'L'Eurafrique: notre dernière chance' (Euroafrica, our last chance), Pierre Nord, Fayard, 1955 - 1Anton Zischka Afrika. Europas Gemeinschaftsaufgabe Nr. 1, (Africa, Europes biggest common task ahead) in (rightwing) Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1951 especially of France and its illborn French Union failed to work well with reality. France eventually failed in regaining its colonies in Asia. The lost Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the start of the Algerian War within 1954 failed to help with the French ambitions. The failure of the strongest remaining European colonial powers, Britain and France, in the Suez Crisis 1956 was a major shock.
In addition, Belgian Congo gained independence 1960. Attempts in the early 1950s to construct a “Belgo-Congolese community” along Antoine van Bilsen's proposalGerard-Libois, Jules (1989), "Vers l'Indépendance: une accélération imprévue", In Congo-Zaïre, Brussels: GRIP, pp. 43–56. or based on local Catholics' idea of a Conscience Africaine, both including a gradual emancipation of the Congo, failed completely.Kalulambi Pongo, Martin (2009), "Le manifeste 'Conscience africaine: genèse, influences et réactions", In Tousignant, Nathalie (ed.), Le manifeste Conscience africaine, 1956, Brussels: Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, pp. 59–81.
Fringe theories In interwar era Britain, fascist politician Oswald Mosley suggested a Third Position approach to Eurafrica. He founded the Union Movement, calling for the integration of Europe into a single entity on base of the slogan "Europe a Nation". As part of this he saw a need for a merger of Europe with Africa as a source of minerals, agricultural produce and new lands for European settlement. Mosley's conception of Eurafrica included upholding apartheid in South Africa, but also cooperation with Africans in central and northern Africa.Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain, Julie V. Gottlieb, Thomas P. Linehan.B.Tauris, 31.12.2003, p.75DRÁBIK, Jakub. Oswald Mosley´s Concept of a United Europe. A Contribution to the Study of Pan-European Nationalism. In. The Twentieth Century, 2/2012, s. 53-65, Prague : Charles University in Prague, ISSN 1803-750X
Similarly, Eurabia, a political neologism coined by writer Bat Ye'Or in the early 2000s claims a conspiracy of Europe, led by France and Arab powers to Islamise and Arabise Europe, thereby weakening its existing culture and undermining an alleged previous alignment with the U.S. and Israel.
Role of French Eurafrique in the 1950s and 60s Postwar France continued in trying to use the process of European Unification as base of its colonial influencesMartin Rempe: Decolonization by Europeanization? The Early EEC and the Transformation of French-African Relations. In: KFG Working Paper Series. Nr. 27, 2011, S. 5. and managed to streamline early European development policy according to its colonial goals.Urban Vahsen: Eurafrikanische Entwicklungskooperation. Die Assoziierungspolitik der EWG gegenüber dem subsaharischen Afrika in den 1960er Jahren, 2010, p. 122ff.Gary Marks: Scale, Community and ‘Eurafrica’: A Response to Hansen and Jonsson. In: JCMS. Nr. 50:6, 2011, S. 1043.
Until the 1960s, the French governments failed to grasp decolonization and provide a working strategy on it.Martin Rempe: Review of Vahsen, Urban. Eurafrikanische Entwicklungskooperation: Die Assoziierungspolitik der EWG gegenüber dem subsaharischen Afrika in den 1960er Jahren., In: H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews. Nr. Oktober, 2011, p. 1. Algeria was technically no French colony as it consisted of three French Departments with about a million inhabitants of European descent, the later pieds-noirs. The French tried to keep Algeria in their Eurafrican space and suggested in 1958 large infrastructure investments ('Constantine Plan') to maintain Algeria economically within their realm. France was well aware that the Algerian Departments were not viable under the conditions of the Common Market and gained some exemption clauses in the Treaty of Rome. European integration put France under pressure, as it had guaranteed various commitments to Algeria in the Evian Accords but had to reduce protectionism and trade barriers according at the same time.Muriam Haleh Daviss “Producing Eurafrica: Development, Agriculture and Race in Algeria, 1958 – 1965, ongoing thesis, Historical Archives of the European University Institute webpage
After decolonization Eurafrica subsequently played an important role in forging the European union and associated treaties, as at the Yaoundé Conventions in 1958 and later.Martin Rempe: Decolonization by Europeanization? The Early EEC and the Transformation of French-African Relations. In: KFG Working Paper Series. Nr. 27, 2011, p. 3.