1 In 1940, the French Empire in Africa included Dahomey, the Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the French Soudan, Niger, Senegal and Upper Volta, administered as the federation of French West Africa (Afrique Occidental Française - A.O.F.). Each territory was presided over by a governor. A governor-general at Dakar, Senegal superintended the Federation as a whole. Chad, the French Congo, Gabon and Oubangui-Chari formed the federation of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Equatorial Française-A.E.F.). These also had individual governors and were supervised by a governor-general at Brazzaville, Congo. The League of Nations mandates of the Cameroon and Togo were attached to A.O.F. and A.E.F. respectively. The small, arid territory of Djibouti on the Horn of Africa was part of this system, as was the vast island-colony of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of the continent.

2 Maran, René, Félix Eboué, grand commis el loyal serviteur (Paris 1957) 85–87Google Scholar.

3 Shirer, William L., The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York 1969)Google Scholar. See Chapters 13 and 17 for a discussion of the regime's political instability in its last years. Chapters 29–31 give a detailed account of the Battle of France while 34–36 discuss the dissolution of the regime in the summer of 1940.

4 The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, Volume I (1955), Griffin, Jonathan transl. (New York 1998) 53Google Scholar.

5 Shirer, The Collapse, 841.

6 De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs, 83–84.

7 Weinstein, Brian, Eboué (New York 1972) 223–224Google Scholar.

8 The Old Colonies were territories under French rule for centuries, while the vast territories of Africa and Southeast Asia were generally acquired during the late nineteenth century.

9 Mam-Lam-Fonck, Serge, Histoire de la Guyane française des débuts de la colonisation à l'aube de l'an 2000 (Cayenne 1996) 182Google Scholar.

10 Farraudiere, Yvette, Ecole et société en Guyane française: scolarisation et colonisation (Paris 1989) 73–76Google Scholar, 84; Mam-Lam-Fonck, Histoire, 175–176, 184–186.

11 Mosse, George L., Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison, WI 1978) 57–58Google Scholar.

12 France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the only major European state that was a net immigrant rather than an emigrant nation, receiving substantial populations from southern and eastern Europe. While there were social and political controversies associated with this process, I have never heard of French individuals from this immigrant background referred to as évolués.

13 I have noted Maran's interpretation of Eboué's 1938 appointment as having particular strategic value. Weinstein also discusses this but suggests that political backbiting during Eboué's tenure as governor of Guadeloupe had more to due with this undesirable appointment. Given that Eboué and Maran believed that his slow advancement and instances of what they considered unfair evaluations was at least in part due to racism, one suspects that this posting may have been part of that same pattern of discrimination within the colonial bureaucracy.

14 Weinstein, on page 68, cites Maran as having claimed that Eboué was a support of Jaurès' socialists from his youth. Maran's reference suggests that this occurred when they were both students in Bordeaux, i.e. during the Affair. Weinstein points out, however, that there is no evidence that Eboué actually joined the party at that time.

15 For a brief but effective exposition of how, when and why the S.F.I.O. emerged as the clearest voice against anti-Semitism and for an inclusive ideology of who is French, despite some initial hesitation, and how the Radicals remained divided and muddled on those issues until late in the Affair, see Cahm, Eric, The Dreyfus Affair in French Society and Politics (London and New York 1994) 96–98Google Scholar, 108–113.

16 It should be noted that it was during this same period that Jaurès and the S.F.I.O. were articulating a socialist colonial ideology and policy that reaffirmed the French tendency toward cultural and administrative assimilation of overseas dependencies. While hardly unique, it is significant that this emerging socialist colonial policy occurred as France was consolidating its hold over vast new territories in Africa and Indochina. See Ageron, Charles-Robert, Politiques coloniales au Maghreb (Paris 1972) 166–169Google Scholar for a good discussion of this period.

17 Weinstein, Eboué, 28–30.

18 A brief but apt reference to Eboué by Suret-Canale, Jean in Essays in African History, Hurst, Christopher transl. (New Jersey 1990) 66Google Scholar.

19 A point convincingly made by Brian Weinstein in his first study of Eboué in ‘Félix Eboué and the Chiefs: Perception of Power in Early Oubangui-Chari’, Journal of African History XI, I (1970) 107–126Google Scholar.

20 The unstable political situation in Kotto-Kouango in south-central Oubangui-Chari is discussed at length in the quarterly reports of the colony's governor in 1917–1918. Eboué was in the adjoining district of Kouango where French rule was less precarious but still far from fully secured. These reports also contain the first references to Chief Solambi, an appointed chief and Eboué's first important protégé among local authority-figures and important to his success in organising labour for the rubber trade. He appears here as an important businessman with connections to French commercial interests. It is an interesting insight into how an informal indirect rule benefited those local powers integrated into it. See Archives Nationale, Section d'outre-mer (Centre des Archives d'outremer, Aix-en-Provence), hereafter AN/SOM (CAOM) 4 (3) Dossier 4, Colony of Oubangui-Chari, 1st Quarterly Report of 1917; 2nd Quarterly Report of 1917; 3rd Quarterly Report of 1917; 4th Quarterly Report of 1917.

21 Ibid., Colony of Oubangui-Chari, Third Quarterly Report of 1918. It should be noted that underlying this initiative was the fact that the populations of Oubangui-Chari, and elsewhere, were facing malnutrition and periodic famine owing to the colonial administration's forcible diversion of labour away from subsistence agriculture and into rubber collection.

22 Maran, Félix Eboué, 30–31, 35–36.

23 Weinstein, Eboué, 64–65.

24 This was Eboué's second secretary-generalship, the first being in Martinique in 1932–1934.

25 AN/SOM, CAOM, Affaires Politiques, Carton 838, Dossier 2 (on microfilm, FM 1 Affaires Politiques/2802/4), Colonie du Soudan français, Rapport Politique Annuel, Année 1935, 26 mai 1936, 75–90. This report by Fousset's successor, Governor Matthieu-Maurice Alfassa, reproduces Eboué's 1935 memorandum. Where a microfilmed version of a previously catalogued archive is used, both the original archival citation and the newer microfilmed version will be given.

26 Ibid., 64–75.

27 AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 838, Dossier 2, Circular #10, 9 octobre 1929, Ministry of the Colonies, Paris, to Governors-General on the commandement indigène. Van Vollenhoven's wartime attempt to reshape colonial policy was recapitulated in this circular of 1929.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., Dossier 1, Circular #54, 15 July 1930, Acting Lt. Governor Prouteaux, Oubangui-Chari, to chefs de circumscriptions.

30 Ibid., Dossier 1, Arrêté du Lieutenant-Gouverneur, p.i., portant réorganisation de l'administration indigène dans la colonie du Soudan français, 30 mars 1935.

31 La nouvelle politique indigène en A.E.F. Reprinted in its entirely in Jean de la Roche and Jean Gottman, La Fédération Française: contacts et civilisations d'outre-mer (Montreal 1945). The authors' introduction to this document discusses the gathering of 6–8 November that approved it.

32 Ibid., 585–586.

33 Ibid., 591–593.

34 Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is usually recognised as the beginning of modern conservatism's critique of Jacobin and other leftist ideas and policies based on abstract principles detached from historical contexts. Taine's Origins of Contemporary France (1875) applied this conservatism to sophisticated historical research on that Revolution and subsequent French history, elevating it to an important role in French intellectual culture in the process. I want to emphasise that I am in no way associating Eboué with the kind of anti-Semitic and more or less racist ideology espoused by Barrès around the time of the Dreyfus affair. It is clear, however, that the emphasis on an individual's and a people's ‘rootedness’ in specific historical, cultural and geographic contexts, and hostility toward that which undermined this supposed rootedness which Barr's articulated so well, and which became an important part of early twentieth-century French intellectual life because of him, had penetrated Eboué's intellectual orientation and development. This is hardly surprising given the influence of those concepts in French society at that time and Eboué's classical education and emersion in the intellectual currents of that era.

35 AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 873, Dossier 1. Le Gouverneur-Général de L'Afrique Equatoriale Française à M. le Commissaire Nationale de l'économie, aux finances et aux colonies, 20 décembre 1941.

36 My translation here is not quite literal but captures the sense of the text. What Eboué writes is ‘[…] il est possible que les circonstances soient assez favorables pour permettre d'en finir avec toutes les ordonnances, tous les senatus-consultes, toutes les lois, tout les décrets qui gênent le libre essor des colonies et pour faire une autonomie relative de nos territories d'outre-mer au sein de laquelle les indigoènes progresseront sans sortir de leur cadre naturel.’

37 They were Decree #378 organising indigenous communes, #377 fixing the statute of notables évolués and #376 modifying the labour system of Equatorical Africa. The text reorganising native justice was Decree #1017 of 13 May 1943, which was reproduced in the Journal Officiel de l'A.E.F. on 1 August 1943, 470–472. The full texts of the 29 July decrees are available in AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 873, Dossier 1.

38 J.O.R.F., 23 juillet 1937, 50,006 and J.O. de l'A.O.F., 50,108. Décret fixant les conditions dans lesquelles les indigoènes de l'Afrique Occidental Française peuvent être admis à la qualité de citoyen français.

39 Suret-Canale, Jean, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945, Gottheiner, Till transl. (New York 1971) 36–37Google Scholar.

40 AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 873, Dossier 1. Commission de législation. Projets des décrets présentés par le Gouverneur-Général de l'Afrique Equatoriale Française. Rapport de la Commission, avril 1942.

41 Ibid., Part III, Rapport de M. Henry Hauck, Directeur du travail, sur le projet de décret portant modification du régime du travail et de main-œuvre en Afrique Equatoriale Française.

42 Ibid., Observations du Commissariat national du justice et à l'instruction publique sur le projet de décret instituant et organisant en l'A.E.F. des jurisdictions indigè;nes coutumières.

43 Ibid., Part C, Projet de décret fixant le statut des indigènes évolués.

44 Ibid., Part D, Projet de décret fixant les régles d'institution, d'organisation et d'administration des communes indigoènes en A.E.F.

45 AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 873, Dossier l, Telegram #140, 16 May 1942, from Governor-General Eboué, Brazzaville, to Colonial Commissioner Pleven, London.

46 Ibid., Telegram #4709, 23 May 1942, Pleven, London, to Eboué, Brazzaville.

47 Ibid., Telegram, 16 June 1942, Pleven, London, to Eboué, Brazzaville.

48 Ibid., Telegram, 18 July 1942, Pleven, London, to Eboué, Brazzaville.

49 This point was clarified by Pleven to Eboué in his telegram of 18 July 1942. In exchange, Eboué was asked to agree that his powers to create these tribunals be exercised ‘prudently’ and that he instructs his administrators to this effect as well.

50 AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 873, Dossier 1, Rapport de la Commission de législation, Tome II. Projets originaux. This volume reproduces the original texts of Eboué's decrees of December 1941. The exemption in question is specified in Article 24 of the original text creating native tribunals.

51 Ibid., Projet de décret instituant et organisant en l'Afrique Equatoriale Française des jurisdictions indigoènes coutumières. Rapport au General de Gaulle, 10 mai 1943. Although signed by both René Pleven and René Cassin, this report clearly reflected the thinking of the Justice Commissioner and those for whom he spoke. In recommending that De Gaulle signed the decree it emphasised that the Chambre de l'homologation would exercise its review authority over these bodies.

There exists a long and detailed correspondance between Pleven and Eboué on this score throughout 1942–1943 collected in this same dossier. It indicates that Pleven made the best case he could for Eboué's scheme, but had to give way to opposition not only from the legal establishment but also from others within the De Gaulle government.

52 Freud, Anna, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, Baines, Cecil transl. (New York 1946) 117–119Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., 122.

54 Ibid., 128.

55 Ibid., 131.

56 Brian Weinstein relates a joke that Eboué apparently told from time to time about himself as ‘a full-blooded black from Bordeaux’. This is all the more interesting in that Eboué was not from Bordeaux, but this was indeed where his French acculturation at the Lycée Montaigne was completed. Frantz Fanon in Black Skins, White Masks, on the other hand, provides interesting insights into the colour-consciousness in the French Antilles well into the twentieth century.

57 Freud, The Ego, 121–122.

58 AN/SOM (CAOM), Affaires Politiques, Carton 2286, Dossier 11. Rapport politique et social pour l'année 1946, mai 1947. The title of Governor-General had been changed to High Commissioner in A.E.F. by this time.

59 AN/SOM (CAOM), Gouvernement-général de l'A.E.F. (hereafter GGAEF), Carton 5, Dossier 206.

60 I discuss the attacks upon the plans emerging from the Brazzaville Conference by African and leftwing metropolitan French intellectuals and politicians in detail in James I. Lewis, ‘The French Colonial Service and the Issues of Reform, 1944–8’, Contemporary European History 4, 2 (1995) 153–188. The effort to block ‘what I call’ an agenda of conservative colonial reform emerging from Brazzaville. and replace it with one ‘I term’ radical democratization French supervision began even before post-war elections.

61 AN/SOM, GGAEF, Carton 5, Dossier 206. Governor Roland Pré, Libreville (Gabon), to Governor-General Bayardelle, Brazzaville, 6 December 1946. Governor Pré discusses Colonial Minister Moutet's message of 21 March 1946 to his personnel on the demise of Felix Eboué's conceptions and those emerging from Brazzaville in this communication.

62 Lewis, ‘The French Colonial Service’. The main focus of that study is how Eboué's colleagues in the colonial service, including some who were personally close to him and helped construct his policies, became among the most powerful and successful actors advancing a conservative colonial policy and blocking radical alternatives in the post-war period.