Hansen, Peo, and Stefan Jonsson. "Preface." Eurafrica: The Untold History of and Colonialism. : Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. xiv–xxii. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 30 Sep. 2021. <>.

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Copyright © Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson 2014. You may share this work for non- commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. Preface

This book retrieves a history of the (EU) long neglected or ignored in scholarship. By providing a more accurate view of the EU’s past, especially of the colonial and geopolitical concerns that played central roles in its establishment in 1957, our book can perhaps also offer a better understanding of the present predica- ments of the European integration process. As we put the finishing touches to the book in December 2013, crisis and division continue to permeate the EU’s internal scene. As many member states’ staggering unemployment and poverty go in tandem with a resurgent fascism and gains for racist parties, a similar relationship is establishing itself between growing national antagonisms within the Union and a widening disparity between its core and peripheral members. To this picture of dilapidation we could add the dramatic drop in overall public support for the EU project since the onset of the crisis in 2008. Even so, in his 2013 ‘Christmas message’ to the Europeans and fellow Christians – entitled ‘The European idea still deserves our support’ – the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, looks rather upbeat as he makes the case for ‘resolute hope’. In 2013, the President reminds us, ‘the economy finally started to pick up and the Eurozone is stable again.’ To be sure, ‘Huge problems remain for those still without a job, but we can look to the future with more confidence. 2014 will be a better year.’ Of course, there is nothing remarkable with this pose or in these words; this is how political leaders sound today, particularly those without a democratic mandate. Far more interesting, though, is the fact that Van Rompuy devoted most of his brief address not to issues close to home, but to those abroad and overseas. Here are the really hopeful news: ‘From Mali to Somalia things are going better than twelve months ago, and the provisional agreement with Iran shows that the path of diplomacy is the best to solve problems.’ Van Rompuy of course

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also opened the prime Christmas present for 2013: ‘And right at our foreign borders men and women in Ukraine are waving the European flag. To them, those are stars of hope.’1 At the Brussels summit on the same day (20 December), the European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, also pointed towards Ukraine: ‘When we see those European flags in the streets of Ukraine in this very cold temperature, we cannot resist to say that they are indeed part of the European family.’ Lithuania’s President and EU Chairman, Dalia Grybauskaite, continued by asserting that ‘[t]he European Union is open to Ukrainian people, but not necessarily the current Ukrainian government’, while UK prime minister David Cameron took it a step further, noting off the record that the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych comes ‘from a different civilisation. He is not a partner for at all.’2 In sharp contrast to the internal scene, then, the clash with Russia over the Ukrainian geopolitical pivot offered the EU the perfect oppor- tunity to demonstrate that it can still muster a united front on the global scene, even having Britain acknowledge the blessings of Europe. But these are of course our words. Because in ‘offering’ Ukraine to sign an association and free trade agreement with the EU, Brussels rarely frames this in terms of geopolitics. From Brussels’ perspective, the offer is rather an act of solidarity with a popular struggle for freedom and dignity against corrupt, authoritarian leaders. Said Manuel Barroso: ‘They want freedom, they want prosperity, they want stability.’3 Thus, while the media may make reference to geopolitics, this epithet only applies to the foul game played by Russia and the Yanukovych circle. ‘The gangster pygmy’, as The Economistcalled Yanukovych, proved himself ‘[u]nwilling to launch economic reforms, cut spending

1 Herman Van Rompuy, ‘The European idea still deserves our support’, 20 December 2013, http://www.european-council.europa.eu/the-president 2 ‘EU leaders close the door on Yanukovych’, EUobserver, 20 December 2013, http:// euobserver.com/foreign/122578 3 European Commission, ‘President Barroso at the European Council: 2013 A break- through year for EU economy’, 20 December 2103, http://ec.europa.eu/news/ employment/131220_en.htm

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or tame the appetites of his cronies’ but he was all the more ready ‘to trade the country’s most valuable asset: Ukraine’s geopolitical position’.4 However, The Economist also contended that ‘despite the appearance of defeat, Europe might have won the battle of Ukraine’.5 By standing with the European dreams of the Ukrainian people, and sticking to ‘the rule of law and human rights’, the EU might prevail and eventually come away with much more than a symbolic victory. According to Brussels and much media reporting and punditry, the bid to associate Ukraine, together with five other former Soviet republics (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan), as part of its scheme, is thus in no way to be seen as a power-political move. At the same time it is an undeniable fact that EU association stands in a blatant zero-sum conflict with Moscow’s plans to form a ‘Eurasian Economic Union’ together with the six countries in question. Still though, we are told, this is not about the EU trying to expand its sphere of influence and challenge Russia in her own backyard. Rather, and as put in the Financial Times, ‘the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme – offered to Ukraine and five other ex-Soviet republics – had been seen as a way of spreading European values and stimulating the kind of reforms the EBRD [European Bank of Reconstruction and Development] says are needed.’ It was launched ‘as an effort to spread European democratic values beyond the organi- sation’s eastern borders. The programme offers free trade and enhanced co-operation to countries that adopt large chunks of EU legislation and conduct political reforms.’6 Indeed, this message is a common one. As we shall see in the following pages, it dates back to the very founding of the current EU in the 1950s. In particular, it is often brought to bear on those recurrent past and present cases where Brussels enters into close

4 ‘Day of the gangster pygmy’ and ‘Stealing their dream’, The Economist, 30 November 2013. 5 ‘Day of the gangster pygmy’, The Economist. 6 ‘Transition delayed’, Financial Times, supplement Connected: Central and Eastern Europe, 16 December 2013.

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cooperation with various dictatorships, such as Gaddafi’s Libya, Ben Ali’s Tunisia, Mubarak’s Egypt, the Gulf kingdoms or King Mohammed VI’s Morocco, the latter even receiving the EU’s praise for his ‘clear commitment to democracy and respect for human rights’.7 We should mention the EU’s staunch support of Chad’s Idriss Déby too, since his regime, according to numerous human rights organi- zations, stands out as one of the most atrocious in the world today. In 2008 the EU launched a military intervention in Chad, abetting France’s interest of propping up Déby’s regime against a rebel assault. Conducted by EUFOR (European Union Force) and comprising thousands of soldiers (of whom many are stationed at Camp Europa in the capital city N’Djamenaa), ‘the mission has been described as the most pan-European force ever to be deployed in ’.8 Announcing its expansion of development aid to Chad for the period 2014–20, the EU’s Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, recently affirmed that ‘The EU wishes to act as a real partner for Chad, in addition to being its leading aid donor. We are promoting stability in the country and a strengthening of the rule of law within a context of democracy and inclusive growth. In addition, we are aware of the important role played by Chad in regional stability.’9 Thus, also in those cases when the EU is calling for the application of military force (as in Chad, Libya, Mali, Somalia or the Central African Republic), such engagements are almost always pitched at a safe distance from crass interest and power politics. Instead they are coded in terms of promoting human rights, democracy, women’s rights, the rule of law, and European and universal norms and values.

7 ‘EU takes king’s side in Moroccan protests’, EUobserver, 20 May 2011. The praise was expressed by the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton. 8 Douglas A. Yates, ‘France, the EU, and Africa’, in Adekeye Adebajo and Kaye Whiteman (eds), The EU and Africa: From Eurafrique to Afro-Europa (London: Hurst and Company, 2012); in the same volume see also Winrich Kühne, ‘The EU Security Role in Chad and the Central African Republic’. 9 European Commission, ‘European Union announces increase in development aid to Chad for 2014–2020’, Press Release, Brussels, 7 November 2013, http://europa.eu/rapid/ press-release_IP-13-1033_en.htm

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Some of this is certainly not unique for the European Union. Yet, the EU seems uniquely adept at promoting – some would say masquer- ading – its geopolitical ambitions and economic interests as democracy, freedom and the dissemination of universal norms and values. Whereas Russia, China and the US continue to play the old game of power politics, the EU travels the world on soft power; it does not make adversaries, it negotiates, it creates partners, it associates, it facilitates trade and it cultivates its neighbourhood. It also receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Contrary to its internal embarrassments of monetary blunder, resurgent fascism, economic stalemate and nationalist bickering, then, the EU’s global stars show few signs of fading. In the Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Manuel Barroso emphasized not only the EU’s benevolent global role in general. He also made sure to mark out the uniqueness of the EU on the world stage. The EU ‘is a new legal order, which is not based on balance of power between nations but on the free consent of states’; it ‘attests to the quest for a cosmopolitan order, in which one person’s gain does not need to be another person’s pain’. Most of all, perhaps, the EU’s unique conduct in global affairs builds on an equally unique historical experience: The concrete engagement of the European Union in the world is deeply marked by our continent’s tragic experience of extreme nationalism, wars and the absolute evil of the Shoah. It is inspired by our desire to avoid the same mistakes being made again. That is the foundation of our multilateral approach for a globalisation based on the twin principles of global solidarity and global responsibility; that is what inspires our engagement with our neighbouring countries and international partners, from the Middle East to Asia, from Africa to the Americas. ‘As a community of nations that has overcome war and fought totali- tarianism’, Barroso continued, ‘we will always stand by those who are in pursuit of peace and human dignity. […] the European Union will help the world come together.’10

10 José Manuel Durão Barroso, ‘From War to Peace: A European tale’, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture on behalf of the European Union, Oslo, 10 December 2012, http://europa.eu/ rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-930_en.htm?locale=EN

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As we show in this book, assertions of the EU’s exceptional status as a benevolent global actor have a long history, harking back to the very beginnings of the European integration project in the early 1920s. More importantly, we also explain that the political valence and credibility of such assertions have always presupposed that history is continually and permanently evaded. Put differently, Barroso’s words do not testify primarily to the EU’s ability to learn from historical experience but to its ability to bend history to fit its own purposes. Historians of Europe and the EU have often contributed to this distortion, as they have held European integration at arm’s length from the dirty business of geopolitics. Scholars have often failed in the historical examination of the global ramifications of European integration and therefore they have also failed to interrogate the role of European integration in global affairs. In part, this can be explained as the outcome of an original and erroneous conception of European integration that we take to task in this book. The EU’s claim for a special relationship of solidarity to its ‘neigh- bourhood’ and overseas ‘partners’ is, in this sense, an indication of a specific historical amnesia. To illustrate what has here been lost from both historical memory and the self-image of the EU, let us once again return to the Ukrainian present and quote another source from within the Brussels bureaucracy who did the rare thing of spelling out the crude essentials of the EU’s proposed association agreement: ‘“These Association Agreements reflect a kind of colonial attitude in the sense that radically different countries are treated in an identical fashion,” said a western diplomat in Kiev who wished to remain anonymous. “Asking them to adapt to EU standards and open up their markets is far more advantageous for European investors than it is for Ukrainian businesses.”’11 Eurafrica is a co-authored book. It is the result of a scholarly and intel- lectual collaboration that confirms the advantages of a transdisciplinary

11 Sébastien Gobert, ‘Ukraine caught between EU and Eurasia’, Le Monde diplomatique, December 2013.

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approach to European history, the history of European integration in particular. It is only by combining our competences, our respective fields of knowledge and methodological skills – one originating in political science and EU studies, the other in cultural theory and the intellectual history of European modernity – that we have been able to resolve the problem that we pose in this book: the relation of European integration to colonialism, and the almost complete exclusion of this relation from both EU studies and histories of colonialism. A first exploration of this relation indicated that the history of colonialism and has been formative of the contem- porary EU’s endeavour to foster a collective sense of European identity among its citizens, but that this influence is either unrecognized or denied.12 To this point of departure a historical examination of Pan-European ideas was then added, which brought to the fore the seemingly peculiar fact that in most programmes for European unifi- cation of the interwar period, Africa stood at the centre.13 As we sought to integrate these early approaches – one observing the disavowed centrality of the colonial legacy in contemporary EU identity politics, the other one noting the centrality of Africa in early blueprints for European integration – we realized that they staked out a new and largely unexplored research area, which concerned the geopolitical and colonial foundation of the European integration project and the EU as such. In exploring this domain, we have relied heavily on the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence. We are grateful for the generosity and assistance we have received at this excellent institution, and we owe special thanks to its former director Jean-Marie Palayret, himself a pioneering expert in the area, for having pointed us towards relevant collections. This project got off to a good start thanks to a

12 Peo Hansen, ‘European integration, European identity and the colonial connection’, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2002, pp. 489–98. 13 Stefan Jonsson, ‘Why we live together: Notes on European Utopias and the Utopia of Europe’; paper presented at the conference ‘The Future of Utopia: Is Innovation Still Possible in Politics, Culture, Theory? An Interdisciplinary Conference in Honor of Fredric Jameson’, Duke University, 24–27 April 2003.

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generous fellowship awarded by the Remarque Institute, New York University, and its late director Tony Judt; at Remarque we would also like to thank Katherine E. Fleming and Jair Kessler. For acquisition of materials we have also benefitted from the services of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the National Library of Sweden, the Riksdag Library and the Labour Movement Archives and Library, all in Stockholm; the Kenya National Archives, Nairobi; and the Humboldt University Library, Berlin. Above all, we are indebted to the Linköping University Library and the outstanding staff at its interlibrary-loan services who have facilitated our research on countless occasions. We have presented drafts and sections of this book at numerous academic and public events where we have received valuable feedback. Here we are particularly grateful to Mai Palmberg at the Nordic Africa Institute; Catherine Perret and Fredrik Tygstrup who invited us to present at a symposium at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes- Saint-Denis; Marilyn Young at the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University; Gurminder Bhambra at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick; Håkan Thörn at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg; Carl Tham at Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund (the Workers’ Educational Association) in Stockholm; Åsa Wall at the Swedish National Heritage Board; and Patrik Tornéus at the literary festival Littfest, Umeå. Gurminder Bhambra at the University of Warwick deserves special mention not only in her role as series editor of Theory for a Global Age, but most of all for her continuous contribution of ideas and inspi- ration to this project. Special thanks also go to Anders Stephanson who read the completed manuscript and provided invaluable feedback. In addition, a number of colleagues have discussed or read parts of the manuscript. For such help, we are grateful to Per Axelson, Nicholas Bancel, Erik Berggren, Herrick Chapman, Matthew Connelly, Ipek Démir, Giuliano Garavini, Mattias Gardell, Ragnar Haake, Jan Ifversen, Christoffer Kølvraa, Nicola Labanca, Victoria Margree, Walter Mignolo, Kalypso Nicolaidis, Magnus Nordenman, Agneta Persson,

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Oliver Rathkolb, Pierre Rosanvallon, Joan W. Scott, Robbie Shilliam, Robert Young and Mattias Åkeson. Our colleagues and friends at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University, have encouraged this project throughout; our work has benefitted in many ways from the Institute’s inspiring intel- lectual atmosphere. Responsibility for errors and shortcomings that remain in the text is of course ours alone. We also acknowledge our publisher’s support; we are particularly indebted to the expertise and patience of Caroline Wintersgill, Mark Richardson and Sandra Stafford. Finally, we thank our immediate colleagues, Anna Bredström and Patricia Lorenzoni. Their intellectual generosity and warm encour- agement have sustained each of us over the years. Funding for our research has been provided by the Swedish Research Council through two generous project grants. We acknowledge this support with gratitude. Earlier versions of some pieces of this book have appeared in European Journal of Social Theory5: 4 (2002); Race & Class 45: 3 (2004); Journal of Historical Sociology 26: 3 (2014); Mediterranean Quarterly, 24: 4 (2013); Journal of Common Market Studies 50: 6 (2012); Globalizations 8: 3 (2011); Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 13: 3 (2011); Dagens Nyheter, 9 December 2012; Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies, eds Kalypso Nicolaidis, Berny Sèbe and Gabrielle Maas (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014); and What’s Culture Got to Do with it? ed. Mai Palmberg (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2009). All translations in the book are our own, unless otherwise noted.

Norrköping, January 2014

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