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Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202

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Journal of Historical Geography

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jhg

We have tailored Africa: French colonialism and the ‘artificiality’ of Africa’sborders in the interwar period

Camille LefebvreCNRSeCEMAf, ANR Frontafrique, France

Abstract

After the First World War, the discourse and methods used to determine and define boundaries changed radically. In Europe, the territorial agreements of1919-20 put forward an ideal of territorial homogeneity, a concept based on the ideal correspondence of state, nation and territory. Meanwhile, in Africa,the French colonizers were also reconsidering their spatial arrangements along the same lines. In this context, the expertise of the social sciences becamecrucial in defining territory and therefore in political decision-making. At the same time, prominent representatives of the new colonial sciences wereresponsible for developing and disseminating the idea of the 'artificiality' of African boundaries. This new generation of experts on French colonizationconsidered the borders of Africa to be scars left behind by the old and arbitrary colonial order, which they wished to see replaced by a more humanisticrule. Their discourses, however, offered a vision of Africa based on the continent's exceptional character. In essence, Africa was considered as a continentdefined principally along ethnic territorial lines, a logic excluding any political definition of territory. This discourse contributed to redefining thecontinent as something radically other.� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Borders; Boundaries; Africa; Colonialism; First World War; Nationality; Colonial sciences

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Just as the destinies of the nations of Europe are once more onthe move, a capsized dugout, an outbreak of malaria, a lostbearing, exhausted credit, stolen luggage or a dried-up wellsuddenlybecomea reason forhesitation.World leaders in theircapital cities reflect upon this occasionally and are frightenedby this thought. They convene conferences, prepare and signagreements. (.) Fortresses, sentry boxes full of customs offi-cers, sometimes even barbed-wire fences today wait on theroads traveled by the dauntless travelers of old. We haveintroduced into what was an undivided wilderness, the para-phernalia of our habits, of ourmistrust, of our safetymeasures.

François Mitterrand, 19531

African borders were drawn with rulers and colored pencils oninaccurate maps by diplomats intoxicated by their sense of supe-riority. This is but one of many all-too-familiar ideas on African

ail address: camillelefebvre@yahoo.fritterrand, Aux frontières de l’Union Française. Indochine-Tunisie, Paris, 1953, 19e2title to this paper combines two formulae. The first is by Robert Delavignette wtale française, Paris, 1931, 32. The second is by Jacques Weulersse who wrote: ‘Euronsidering this commonplace was one of the main axes of my doctoral thesis964, Doctoral thesis, Université Paris 1, 2008. On the French side, Pierre Boilleyto completely rethink African borders today. M. Foucher, L’invention des frontiè

1994; P. Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionist and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Fronhe Paradox of African Boundaries, London, 1996; P. Boilley, Du royaume au territoin: C. Dubois, M. Michel, P. Soumille (Eds), Frontières plurielles, frontières conflict

88/$ e see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.016/j.jhg.2010.11.004

borders.2 Indeed, over the last forty years, the artificiality of Africa’spolitical boundaries has become an axiomatic and commonplacefeature of discourse on contemporary Africa. However, thisassumptionwas based on the dominant consensus inwhich Africanborders were considered merely as consequences of domination;that they were wholly imported products imposed withoutdiscussion nor common-sense and in total defiance of pre-existinghuman structures and geography. The aim here is not to challengethis collective representation nor to offer detailed counterargu-ments.3 In fact, rather than questioning the veracity of the stereo-type, the objective here is to determine how this theme became thetaken-for-granted norm and a standard discursive convention. Thispaper does not pretend to identify the very first utterance of thediscourse, but rather attempts to re-trace the rationale underlyingthe emergence of this consensus in the French-speakingworld. Thisrequires us to identify the moment when the discourse was first

0.ho spoke of territories ‘that we have arbitrarily staked out’, R. Delavignette, Afriqueope has tailored Africa to her pleasure’, J. Weulersse, L’Afrique noire, Paris, 1934, 38.: C. Lefebvre, Territoires et frontières. Du Soudan central à la République du Nigerand Michel Foucher’s works, and on the English-speaking side Paul Nugent’s, haveres, Paris, 1987; M. Foucher, Fronts, frontières. Un tour du monde géopolitique, Paristier. The Lie of the Borderland Since 1914, Athens/Ohio, 2002; A. Asiwaju, P. Nugentire, des terroirs à la patrie ou la lente construction formelle et mentale de l’espaceuelles, Paris, 2000, 27e48.

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accepted, while simultaneously analyzing its intellectual andpolitical foundations. In order to understand the logic behind thediscourse on the artificiality of African borders, analysis of thisdiscourse will be combined with the study of the practices, politicalevents and institutions which nurtured it. The history of discoursesand the history of the practices related to them will thus be inter-twined. In this way the experiences that fueled these ideas, theplaces in which they were circulated, how they were actually used,and with what effects, will become clear.

It was between First and SecondWorldWars that this idea of theartificiality of Africa’s borders emerged. At this time, severalscholars associated with colonial institutions and the colonialmilieux more generally developed the idea that colonial activitiesin Africa had carved up the land into arbitrary lots. They promotedthese ideas in a variety of published works, including widely-readbooks and journals. The construction and dissemination of thisdiscourse should be situated within several intricately linkedcontexts: the post-war reconstruction in Europe and of the1919e1920 territorial agreements; the colonial heyday paradoxi-cally linked to the beginnings of a radical questioning of colo-nialism; and finally, the institutional and public coming of age ofthe ‘colonial sciences’.4 In France, African borders, both intra-colonial (administrative) and inter-colonial (political), and theterritorial configurations created by colonization, became a subjectof debate. To understand the full complexity of discourses at thetime, it will be necessary to reconstruct the relationships betweenthese different contexts.

Drawing the right borders

Before analyzing the emergence of a Francophone discourse on theartificiality of African borders, it is necessary first to consider theideas and practices that served to define borders in Europe and inthe colonies at the time. Indeed, the interwar period was a time ofreinvention and transformation of the very idea of borders and ofsubstantial innovation in the methods and practices used to definethem. Views on what constituted an ideal boundary began tochange. The preference for strong strategic limits was modified inthe light of prevailing socio-economic patterns, with nation-basedor ethnographic criteria emerging alongside conventional criteria.5

An era of territorial agreements throughout Europe began with theend of the First World War. The breakup of the former multina-tional empires provided the opportunity for creating new statesand for defining their borders in international fora, such as the 1919Paris Peace Conference. For the French colonial authorities, the warhad brought themajor period of imperial expansion to a close.Withthe period of conquest complete, they declared it time for thepacification and exploitation of French Africa. In Europe as inAfrica, territorial structures were undergoing redefinition: space

4 This category was used by French commentators in the first half of the twentiethcolonized areas. On the use this category see: P. Singaravelou, Professer l’Empire. L’ensUniversity Paris 1, 2007, 38e40.

5 R.N. Schofield, Laying it down in stone: delimiting and demarcating Iraq’s boundarie6 C. Baechler, C. Fink (Eds), L’établissement des frontières en Europe après les deux guer

dans l’évolution de l’ordre européen, Politique étrangère 65 (2000) 847.7 For further reading on this matter: M. Foucher, Les géographes et les frontières, H

géographes français, Relations Internationales 109 (2002) 7e24; T. Ter Minassian, Les géoPaix en 1919, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 44 (1997) 252e286; M. Heffer1914e1919, in: M. Bell, R. Butlin, M. Heffernan (Eds), Geography and Imperialism: 1820e191919: l’usage des sciences historiques dans la négociation pour les frontières de la Fran

8 E. Hobsbawm, Nations et nationalisme depuis 1780, Paris, 1990, 2006, 246.9 N.C. Guy, Linguistic boundaries and geopolitical interests: the Albanian boundary co

10 E. Boulineau, Les géographes et les frontières austro-slovènes des Alpes orientales en173e184.

was re-conceptualized according to newoutlooks, assumptions andmethods and new borders were consequently drawn.

Redrawing the boundaries of Europe along ‘national’ lines

The redrawing of political borders in Central and Eastern Europeand the reorientation of international relations and internationallaw around the Wilsonian idea of the right of nations to self-determination inaugurated a new era of boundary-making.6 Inorder to draw boundaries acceptable for the new states and thuscapable of guaranteeing future peace, the expertise of the socialsciences was called for. In France, this concerned historians andmore particularly geographers working for the Comité d’études ofthe French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.7 This committee, created byAristide Briand in 1917, was designed to give shape to the territorialaims of France and its allies in anticipation of post-war negotia-tions. Indeed, French geography and especially French humangeography, helped to formulate the desired proposals and solu-tions, even if in the end strategic and political issues werepredominant. Rather than assessing the influence and weight ofthis expertise in the decisions made, what matters here is under-standing the geographical discourse used by the scientists involvedin the plotting of the new political map. Issues concerning militarystrategy, economics and historical land rights were part of thedebates. However, the principle of nationality and that of thepeoples’ right to self-determination were the primary bases ofnegotiation and represented the criteria usually accepted by all theexperts of the Comité d’études.

Territorial nationalism was based on the idea that a necessarycongruence existed between language, ethnicity and territory. Thisled to attempts to subdivide the whole continent into coherentterritorial states, each inhabited by distinct, ethnically andlinguistically homogeneous populations.8 The consensus was thatstates should ideally be based on the overlapping of political andnational unity and that state boundaries should coincide with thoseof nationalities and languages. It was thought that wherever laya language, lay a nation; and that the area covered by a languagemarked the scope of a nation. At the Versailles peace conference(1919e1920), the new ideas of linguistic boundaries, under thepretext of national self-determination, came to full prominence.9 Inrespect of all these professed principles, experts, such as thegeographers E. de Martonne for the French or J. Cviji�c for the Serbswere thus asked to determine specific borders corresponding toclear-cut anthropo-geographical criteria.10 Their aim, even if theydisagreed on interpretations, was influenced by the idea of iden-tifying homogeneous groups and to have local borders coincidewith their limits. The careful observation and study of the territorialdistribution of local populations was supposed to allow responsibleborder divides. To make such decisions, ethnographic maps, visu-alizing the spatial distribution of human groups and of linguistic

century. It referred then to all the sciences devoted to the study of colonialism oreignement des sciences coloniales en France sous la IIIe République, Doctoral thesis,

s by mixed international commission, Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 404.res mondiales, Bern, 1996; G.-H. Soutou, La Première Guerre mondiale: une rupture

érodote 33e34 (1984) 117e130; J. Bariety, La Grande Guerrre (1914e1919) et lesgraphes français et la délimitation des frontières balkaniques à la Conférence de lanan, The spoils of war: the Société de Géographie de Paris and the French empire40, Manchester/New York, 1995, 221e264; O. Lowczyk, L’historien et le diplomate ence, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 236 (2009) 27e44.

mmissions, 1878e1926, Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 463.1919e1920: entre la Mitteleuropa et les Balkans, Revue de Géographie alpine 4 (2001)

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facts, were produced so that all major spatial discontinuities couldbe readily identified.11

But this program of constructing homogeneous territorialnations through the production of rational ethnic boundaries basedon linguistic criteria quickly became impractical. As early as 1913,the use of language as the sole criteria to determine ethnographicidentity and thereby to define international boundaries had alreadyappeared problematic to the southern boundary commission inAlbania, as so many people in the region were bilingual or trilin-gual.12 The identification of uniform ethnic and linguistic groupswas constantly offset by the mingling of peoples and languages.Moreover, the consideration of areas as ethnically homogeneoussometimes clashed with higher economic, strategic or geopoliticalinterests. If the theoretical definition of a border based on theperfect congruence between state, ethnicity and language wasadmitted by all, in the end the political decisions were generallybased upon geopolitical interest rather than on these principles.Nonetheless these theories were considered as an ideal, even ifthey were often impossible to implement. This model continued toshape the idea of borders and territory throughout the first half oftwentieth century.13

A second criterion was also at the heart of the interwar debatesover boundary-making, especially in the arguments of Frenchgeographers. This was the idea of ‘the region’, as it was understoodby Vidal de la Blache. Although the term region itself was rarelyused, it was a regional approach that largely specified the analysisof French expert geographers in border matters.14 The prevalence ofthis notion can be seen in the majority of geographical studies ofthe time. Typically many PhD theses of the period did their best todemonstrate the specificity of limited geographical areas.15 Basedon Vidalian theory, the idea was that any territorial space wasdivisible into units, the coherence of which sprung from environ-mental factors and the distinctiveness of which could scientificallybe identified. The geographic region was, in this perspective,a homogeneous physical area built around human, economic andpolitical networks. It was seen as forming a whole in which localpopulation and local environment created sustainable andharmonious combinations. This geographical analysis also consid-ered that what generated the internal unity of a territory carriedmore weight than what defined its borders. It was thus the weak-ening cohesion of a region at its margins that was seen as markingareas of discontinuity. Such an approach also tended to essentializespace through a logic that built territories around regional identi-ties rather than political entities. This logic nonetheless fittedperfectly well with the first principle of nationality, which it simplydisplaced at another level.

Post-1918 territorial agreements in Europewere thus marked byseveral developments in the methods and logics used to defineborders. Four of these are particularly important: first the influenceof scientists and particularly the involvement of geographers in thedebates; secondly, the emphasis placed on the expertise of socialsciences in the processes of decision making; thirdly, the desire to

11 G. Palsky, Emmanuel de Martonne and the Ethnographical Cartography of Central Etraceur de frontières: Emmanuel de Martonne et la Roumanie, L’espace géographique 412 Guy, Linguistic boundaries and geopolitical interests (note 9), 458.13 Hobsbawm, Nations et nationalisme (note 8), 246e253.14 Boulineau, Un géographe traceur de frontières (note 11), 362; Minassian, Les géogra15 P. Claval, Continuité et mutations dans la géographie régionale de 1920 à 1960, in: P.159e184.16 Heffernan, The spoils of war (note 7), 221.17 C.M. Andrew, S. Kanya-Forstner, World War I and Africa, Journal of African History 118 Bariety, La Grande Guerre (1914e1919) et les géographes français (note 7), 13; Heffe19 At the time, Gabriel Angoulvant was the temporary Governor General of French WConklin, ‘Democracy’ rediscovered: civilization through association in French West Afric

establish viable states to ensure stability and peace; and, finally, thedominance of a consensus concerning the principle of nationalityand the concept of geographic region. While strategic, defensive oreconomic criteria still often carried more diplomatic weight, fromthe point of view of scientific theory, it was the principle ofcongruence between state, nation and territory and the associatedconcept of region that held sway.

Rethinking the puzzle of French West Africa

The First World War also marked the final phase of French imperialexpansion, and thus a new phase of colonial rule in French Africa,where space was once more redefined. Territorial configurations eregardless of their scale e had been seen by the colonial authoritiesand administrators since the early days of French expansion inAfrica as temporary productions supposed to evolve according tofuture circumstances and context. For the French colonial author-ities, the territorial framework was but a tool which served domi-nation, made administration possible and remained subject tochanging conditions and stakes. However, the switch frommilitaryto civil administration and the transition from a logic of conquest toa logic of occupation transformed the objectives of the colonizersand changed French colonial ways of seeing, re-defining Africanterritory and borders. The rise of a developmental French colo-nialism led to the theoretical definition of territory no longersimply by strategic or military means but also on the basis ofhumanistic and economic criteria.

Through the latter part of the war, it became increasinglyapparent that its resolution would lead to a redistribution of colo-nial territory between the victorious Allied powers. Preparation forpost-war negotiations has been gathering pace since 1916 and theservices of leading academic authorities e including geographers ewere much in demand to help formulate war aims and colonialdemands.16Within the federation of FrenchWest Africa, a variety ofmore or less utopian projects arose aimed at re-defining localterritorial configurations. As early as 1916, proposals for the post-war division of the German colonies amongst the allies, bringingabout major territorial reorganization within Africa, were beingdebated. The lobbyists of the Committee of French Africa andespecially their General Secretary, Augustin Terrier, suggested thatFrance should not only take possession of the German territories,but should also seek to acquire the territories occupied by neutralallies so as to achieve the complete unification of West Africa.17

Meanwhile, the Geographical Society of Paris brought togetheracademic geographers and businessmen within committeespreparing memoranda for future peace treaties.18 One of theseprojects was solely devoted to finding the best way of oustingGermany from Africa and to considering the territorial changes thiswould engender.

When the war did come to an end, negotiations about thereallocation of German colonial territories encouraged GovernorGeneral Angoulvant to imagine all kinds of exotic configurations.19

urope (1917e1920), Imago Mundi 54 (2002) 111e119; E. Boulineau, Un géographe(2001) 358e369.

phes français et la délimitation des frontières balkaniques (note 7), 252e286.Claval, A.L. Sanguin (Eds), La géographie à l’époque classique (1918e1968), Paris, 1996,

9 (1978) 12.rnan, The spoils of war (note 7), 225e253.est Africa and of French Equatorial Africa. More on this topic can be found in: A.L.a (1914e1930), Cahiers d’Études Africaines 37e145 (1997) 62.

C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202194

He suggested swapping British Togo for Gambia, Sierra Leone forDahomey, Liberia for the eastern marches of Niger e Gouré,N’Guigmi and Lake Chad e and, finally, to abandon to the Italianallies the northern and eastern parts of Niger.20 His grand idea wasto create a more homogeneous and coherent French territory. In1917, the Governor General Clozel had developed a similar projectwhen he suggested that the borders of West Africa should beredrawn to take into account its human organization and economicgeography.21 In a territorially ideal world, he thought that Nigeriashould be taken from Britain and absorbed by French EquatorialAfrica.22 As for Colonel Maurice Abadie in 1927, he proposed todismantle the colony of Niger and to separate it into the Colony ofMiddle Niger straddling the River Niger and a Middle Africa underthe aegis of French Equatorial Africa.23 This project, however, wasconsidered as non-sustainable andwas quickly abandoned. In 1932,Governor General Brévié also developed a comprehensive reorga-nization program, which envisaged the abolition of Upper Voltaand the fusion of Mauritania and Senegal24. Ultimately, only thefirst part of the project was implemented. In 1937, GovernorGeneral Coppet established yet another reorganization project. Hereactivated the idea of the fusion of Senegal and Mauritania andproposed, for the same reasons, that Dahomey and Niger should belinked. This project received some support in the Ministry in Paris.It was only shelved after the 1944 Brazzaville conference.

All these projects were characterized by a substantially similarlogic, which was basically to improve the homogeneity of FrenchWest Africa, its human organization and its economic performanceby reducing the costs of occupation and facilitating movementwithin the Federation.

Defining natural and human regions in the colonies

The same willingness to rethink the territorial structures wasexhibited at the colonial level during interwar years. This is clearlyhighlighted, for example, in the case of Niger. With a Europeancolonial personnel (military and administrative combined) ofbarely 220 men, for more than one million inhabitants and an areaof 1,200,000 square kilometers, Niger was a very under-adminis-tered territory. In order to fully grasp the logic and activities ofcolonial administration in territorial matters in this area, two caseswhich exemplify the broader pattern of reorganization during theinterwar period will be examined. At this local scale, broadlycomparable practises and ideas were developed, including the useof experts and scientifically-based arguments and the aim of con-structing economic and ethnic homogenous spaces. If during theperiod of conquest French soldiers had pragmatically relied onexisting political and territorial structures to advance their inter-ests, the new generation approached these spaces with new ideasand new methods (Figs. 1e3).

In order to do away with the blurred contours of their territory,the colonial administration of the French colony of Niger sought toclarify the situation of the Tibesti region, located at the junction ofFrench Equatorial Africa, French West Africa and Libya. This

20 Y. Marguerat, A quoi rêvaient les Gouverneurs généraux? Les projets de ‘remembrS. Mbaye, I. Thioub (Eds), AOF: réalités et héritages, Dakar, 1997, 90e91.21 A.L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West A22 Marguerat, A quoi rêvaient les Gouverneurs généraux? (note 20), 92.23 M. Abadie, La Colonie du Niger, Paris, 1927, 357.24 J.R. Benoist, La balkanisation de l’AOF, Dakar, 1978, 42e45.25 C. Rottier, Sahara oriental. Kaouar-Djado-Tibesti, Bulletin du Comité de l’Afrique Franç26 ANN Archive Nationale du Niger (National Archive of Niger) 21. 0. 36, CorrespondancGénéral de l’AOF, direction des affaires politiques et administratives, cabinet militaire D27 ANN 1 E 10. 45, Rapport Rottier. Tibesti, 1927. Renseignement documentaire d’ordre d28 Lefebvre, Territoires et frontières (note 3), 220e227 and 257e271.

mountain territory was still largely unknown to Europeans. Therewere no established outposts and its confines remained mostlyuncontrolled and undefined. However, the conquest of Fezzan bythe Italians in 1926 changed the balance of the situation. The Ital-ians were able to establish outposts where there was then no traceof French occupation and consequently they could claim superiorrights to those of France in this mountain territory. For the French, ittherefore became urgently necessary to determine the status of theborder area.With this in mind, a survey party led by Captain Rottierwas organized. Rottier had been specially recommended byGovernor Brévié to the Governor General because of his severalexpeditions in the Tibesti Mountains and because he had earlierpublished a report on Eastern Sahara.25 Brévié believed that Rottierwas ‘better qualified than anyone else [..] because of his knowl-edge of this area and its people’.26 Having accomplished his surveymission, Rottier wrote a report in which he gave his opinion as tothe best territorial organization for the area. Indeed, most of hisforty-page report strove to establish the geographical existence oftwo distinct regions within what was usually called Tibesti. Rottierdistinguished the Tchigaï region, inhabited by the Gounda tribe,whose activities were oriented toward French West Africa, and theTibesti Mountains per se, inhabited by Touzoubas and Toma-ghéras.27 The line he recommended left the Tchigaï and the Goundatribe to French West Africa and advocated that the Tibesti Moun-tains should be part of French Equatorial Africa. The report waspresented to the Governor General, who was left to decide theissue.

The separation of a region, and its passage from one jurisdictionto another depending on the evolution of local context or on themanagement of local problems, was not a new phenomenon inthe history of French territorial organization during colonization.The occupier was constantly intent on improving the system andthereby the effective control of the territory. But what is new is thekind of arguments used in Captain Rottier’s report. Analysis of whatwas considered to be expert advice allows one to observe thearguments and methods considered as conclusive at the time.Indeed, what appears pre-eminent is the importance of geographicarguments and the determining role of the idea of region. Rottierbuilt his proposal for a border on the delimitation of twogeographical and human regions and based it on a correspondencebetween space, local population and the networks e mostlycommercial e constructed by this population. His arguments werebased on a geographical description, which was itself based onobservations made during his field observations and his regionalsurveys. Contrary to what was the case in the analyses of hispredecessors, references to any political or historical issues werepractically absent from Rottier’s report. Thus, the definition ofterritory ceased to stem simply from investigations and enquirieswith local populations, as had often been the case during the periodof conquest.28 After the First World War, the expertise of thecolonial administrators was sufficient.

Internal administrative boundaries could also be reorganized.By an Order of 28 March 1931, the northern part of the

ement’ de l’Afrique de l’ouest pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, in: C. Becker,

frica, Stanford, 178.

aise, janvier, 1924, 1e14.e relative au Tibesti, 1926, Lettre n�3854 AG/I, du 4 octobre 1926 à M. le Gouverneurakar, 1.ivers: économique, administratif, social, géographique, 1929.

Fig. 1. The changing shape of Niger during French colonization (C. Lefebvre, Territoires et frontiéres. Du Soudan central à la République du Niger 1800e1964, Doctoral thesis, UniversitéParis 1, 2008, vol. 2, 189).

C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 195

administrative Circles of Maradi and Zinder was split to create theCircle of Tanout. The plan was to ‘separate the nomadic andsedentary populations. As Tanout should be inhabited exclusivelyby nomads’.29 According to Lt. Périé, ‘the aimwas to bring togetherunder one command roughly similar geographical, human andeconomic regions’.30 The objective was to facilitate colonialmanagement by creating a homogeneous structure based on

29 ANN 14. 1. 9, Monographie du cercle de Maradi en 1955, Maradi, 1955, 1e2.30 ANN 14. 1. 2, Carnets monographique du cercle de Maradi, Périé, Maradi, 1945.

human unity. Specific regions therefore had to be identified by thecolonial administration, along the preconceived lines of populationand lifestyle. But although this goal was perfectly logical, accordingto the administrator Périé, reorganization was to prove a source ofconsiderable difficulty. Indeed, the colonial administrators soonrealized that the new border cut ‘all the vital lines of the region:transportation routes, trade routes, north to south seasonal

Fig. 2. The Colony of Niger in 1926 (M. Abadie, La colonie du Niger, Paris, 1927).

Fig. 3. The Tibesti Region (M. Abadie, La colonie du Niger, Paris, 1927).

C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202196

C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 197

migratory routes, and allowed an entire population of pastoralmigrants to evade taxes and grazing duties’.31 The creation of thesubdivision of Tanout did not fulfill its purpose and in no waymadeadministration any easier; even though its reorganization had beenbased on the assumption that sedentary and nomadic lifestyleswere naturally incompatible, a powerful and enduring theme incolonial administration. This distinction, however, once imple-mented, revealed itself to be impracticable. In this region, thesedentary and nomadic populations had complementary lifestylesbased on reciprocal exchanges.

Thus the outlooks determining the choices and methods of theadministration seem to have evolved after the initial period ofconquest. The military had, until then, taken into account thedynamics of the local historical and political circumstances. Thesewere seen as themeans of tracing lines thatwould be accepted byalland could efficiently secure their own rule anddomination. But localsocieties were no longer perceived in this way. They were now seenin the light whichWestern science shone upon them. Territory wasnot a matter of finding out what the local populations had to sayabout it, but a question of building something that coincided withthe idea that the West had of these populations and their lifestyles.The newgeneration of administrators thus based their definitions ofspace on theoretical preconceptions influenced by the idea ofgeographical and human regions. Thesewere seen as homogeneousunits built, as far as possible, along the lines of the supposedgeographical and human links. From then on, what administratorsthought no longer depended on local popular inquiries but onobservations, nourished by the geographical discourse of the day,which linked together population, environment and lifestyle.Finally, the economicargumentswhich, until that time,hadnotbeenmentioned much or were secondary in the discourses of the earlycolonizers were now given priority. The colonizers believed theirknowledge and analyses of territory to be sufficiently precise to beable determinewhate according to their own criteriaewas best forthe local populations. Their observations and experience werethought to offer sufficient knowledge of local societies to single-handedly build territorial configurations capable of answeringwhatwas thought to be the genuine needs of the people.

The above analysis of border-defining logics and practices inAfrica and Europe between the two world wars highlights severalcommon features. The first was the desire to draw the best possibleboundaries, ones that facilitated administration and that improvedpeople’s lives; two aspects of any border that were thought, at thetime, to be closely interwoven. Old-fashioned strategic argumentswere immediately countered by a discourse influenced by the newtheories of the social sciences idealizing ethnographic and linguisticboundaries. A consensus soon emerged around the value of thesearguments in discussions of territorial organization. The secondcommon feature, in this perspective, was that the use of identifiedexperts became crucial. The experts’ legitimacy, that gaveweight totheir words, could be obtained in twoways. It could be institutionaland academic or based on experience and local knowledge. Some-times it was based on a combination of both. Most of the time,however, those invited to share their knowledge during bordernegotiations were either scientists having achieved successfulacademic careers, such as E. De Martonne, or local administratorsand military men, considered as native population experts, insofaras field experience was also considered valid expertise. The disci-plines of the social sciences andmoreparticularlygeography shapedthe minds of all these men, whether academics or military or

31 ANN 14. 1. 2, Carnets monographique du cercle de Maradi.32 Foucher, Fronts, frontières (note 3), 17e20.33 Singaravelou, Professer l’Empire (note 4), 7.

administrators. They nourished the way they thought about spaceand oriented their policy-making. Indeed, there seems to have beenwidespread agreement concerning the ideal of a congruencebetween particular human groups, language and territory and thepossibility of identifying such homogeneous units in spatial terms.These two consensual ideas soon combined and came to reinforceone another. Finally, there are differences in approach depending onthe scale of decision. At the level of State, colony or federation, thelogic of strategic, economic and geopolitics is followed, while at thelocal scale concerns are centeredon the ideaof natural region, ethnicgroup and the territory associatedwith them. In this intellectual andpolitical context, some public figures regarded as specialists incolonization and African geography began to criticize the territorialdivision of the continent. Their arguments, the subject of thefollowing section, profoundly changed the image of Africa and ofAfrican space in the Francophone world.

Challenging the wrong borders

During the interwar period, the nature and significance of politicalborders were a major issue of debate amongst intellectuals andscientists in Europe following the geopolitical theories of Mack-inder in Britain, Haushofer in Germany and in France JacquesAncel’s response to the German theories.32 In the French context,the discourse on boundaries included critical challenges to therationality of colonial borders in Africa. This theme appears in theliterature of the colonial sciences, a field which was, at the time,only just gaining institutional recognition. It does not seem to havebeen prominent either in the reports of the administrators servingin the field, nor in the reports of the official colonial bodies or evenin those associated with the colonial lobby at this time. The aimhere is to understand why and how this idea emerged in thecontext of specialist expertise in the colonial sciences, and why iteventually came to be accepted much more widely. This issue willbe approached by examining the modes of assessment and vali-dation of the theories of the day, by analyzing what was at stakebehind these discourses and by seeking to understand why suchscientific statements were generally accepted.

A qualified discourse: the value of experience and scientific expertise

It was in the work of Augustin Bernard, George Hardy, Robert Dela-vignette and Jacques Weulersse, four authors, whose work cover thefull scope of sciences devoted to the study of colonialismand coloniesbetween the twoworldwars, that the ‘artificiality’ of Africa’s colonialborders appeared as a theme for the first time. The ambition of theFrench colonial sciences at the time was to build an autonomousscientific field of research, so contributing to the efficient adminis-tration and economic prosperity of the colonies and legitimizing theFrench colonial effort by exploiting the humanitarian dimension ofthe Empire.33 Scientific legitimacy, as the careers of these four menindicate, thus derived from an academic cursus honorum as much asfrom practical knowledge of the colonial territory.

Bernard, Hardy and Weulersse had all sat the agrégation inhistory and geography and the latter two had equally graduatedfrom the école normale. Weulersse had been trained at the écolenormale by the two prominent professors, Albert Demangeon andEmmanuel de Martonne, while Bernard and Weulersse presentedtheir doctorates. By 1920, Bernard had become a renowned

C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202198

academic, a fully-fledged professor of geography and colonizationof North Africa at the Sorbonne, the same University whereDemangeon and De Martonne, two of the most important repre-sentatives of Vidalian geography also taught.34

However, beyond the legitimacy acquired through success atcompetitive exams and reputable university courses, it was in thecolonial field that all four had acquired their rights as experts onAfrica. Bernard had been stationed in Algeria between 1894 and1898 and then returned there regularly on field missions. Hardy,after having taught high school in Bourges and Orleans, secureda position as inspector of education in French West Africa, whichfirst took him to Dakar. He was then appointed by Hubert Lyautey,the resident governor of Morocco, as director of public instruc-tion.35 Hardy thus spent several years in Africa from 1913 to 1920.As to Delavignette, he initially had neither academic training nora university degree. It was solely his field experience andknowledge of colonial realities that gave him his legitimacy. In1919, he entered the colonial administration as an assistant in thecivil services. As a First World War veteran, he was offered a six-month training course at the école coloniale. His first posting wasin Niger where he spent two years in Zinder as financial admin-istrator, then four more in Upper Volta.36 He was also in the fieldduring the reorganization of the territories of the French WestAfrica in the early 1920s. When he returned to France in 1930, hebecame a journalist and writer and published in 1931 the hugelysuccessful Les paysans noirs. Delavignette then led a doublecareer: he was simultaneously an administrator and a reputablescholar.37 In 1936, he was appointed as the head of staff/chef decabinet of Marius Moutet, the Minister of Overseas France. Weu-lersse, finally, had no real colonial experience though he had beenawarded a travel grant that had enabled him to visit Africa andspend two years e from 1928 to 1930 e traveling from Morocco toSouth Africa, through Senegal, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and the Frenchand Belgian Congos.

The writings of these four men on the artificiality of Africanboundaries were published by the major publishing houses inFrance, reflecting their leading position in the field of colonialsciences between the two world wars. Indeed, the years between1920 and 1930 represented the heyday of colonial publication, asmeasured by the number of books published, of editors publishingon the colonies and of collections devoted to the French Empire.38

The works concerned here were part of this publishing frenzy.Delavignette published his book Afrique occidentale française in theofficial collection of the 1931 Colonial Exhibition. George Hardyedited several collections for Larose, major publishers in the colo-nial 1920s and one of the main outlets for publications in colonialsciences. Works by Weulersse, Hardy and Delavignette were pub-lished in collections aimed at awide audience. Bernard, meanwhile,published his thoughts on African borders in a volume of theGéographie Universelle edited by Lucien Gallois and Vidal de laBlache. His participation in this collective work marked the apex ofhis career.39

34 E. Colin, Jacques Weulersse (1905e1946), Annales de Géographie, 56e301 (1947) 53.35 E. Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l’Afrique? La construction des savoirs africaniste36 W.B. Cohen, Empereurs sans sceptre, Paris, 1973, 145.37 B. Mouralis, A. Piriou, Robert Delavignette, savant et politique (1897e1976), Paris, 20038 Singaravelou, Professer l’Empire (note 4), 186.39 D. Nordman, Augustin Bernard, in: F. Pouillon (Ed), Dictionnaire des orientalistes de l40 A. Bernard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI e Afrique septentrionale et occidentale. D41 Bernard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 1, 23.42 Bernard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 447.43 Bernard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 447.44 Bernard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 446.45 F. Deprest, Géographes en Algérie. Savoirs universitaires en situation colonial, Paris, 20

Each one of these unique biographies reveals the many differentways it was possible to acquire legitimacy in the scientific field of thestill very open colonial sciences between the two world wars: fromthe self-taught technocrat-cum-successful writer, to the SorbonneProfessor attracted by political expertise; from the specialist experton colonial education embodying the science of colonization to theyoung traveling geographer from the école normale. Their legitimacyas experts of Africa sprung from the fact that their expertise in thecolonial system e that they either collaborated with or simplyobservedewas judged to be authorized by their academic positionsor their experience of Africa. Although they themselves were allobservers of, or actors within, the structures of colonial rule, theybased their critiques of African borders on the idea that theyreflected the arbitrariness of colonialism itself.

Criticisms of an arbitrary colonial system

In the introduction to Volume XI of the Géographie universelle,entitled Afrique septentrionale et occidentale (1937), Bernard wrotethat the partition of the African continent would be considered, inthe future, as one of the most significant moments in the history ofthe world.40 This division had been accomplished through theEuropean powers ‘cutting out vast areas of African territory,without ever taking into account, in these purely artificial divides,either the borders, the geographic conditions or the indigenousgroups’.41 In the second part of Volume XI devoted to West Africa,he again insisted on the absurdity of the political divisions in theregion, which had been ‘shared like a cake cut into slices’.42 Hewrote that the European powers had been inspired by ‘no otherprinciple, than the desire for each nation to place its colors on themap over surfaces that had to be as wide as possible’43 and that thecolonizers were ‘very little concerned with improving the plight ofthe indigenous populations’.44 Bernard was, in fact, very muchlinked to radical-socialist political circles and was a ferventsupporter of their politique indigène. Though he was also connectedto colonial circles, he kept a critical eye on theway colonizationwasgoing, particularly in Algeria. In his mind, the duty of colonialadministrators was to make the transitions of colonial change assmooth as possible and to manage these so as to also benefitindigenous populations. Since he saw colonization as deeply dis-rupting native lifestyles, Bernard defended the idea of a form ofcolonial rule that was better adjusted to the environment and to thelocal population.45 His critical analysis of colonial boundariesshould be viewed in this perspective.

George Hardy, as the director of the école coloniale, edited thecollection Manuels coloniaux, in which he self-published a series ofbooks addressing the issue of borders: Géographie de la Franceextérieure, Géographie et colonisation, Vues générales de l’histoire del’Afrique, and especially La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre.In these last two books, Hardy described the processes underlyingthe delimitation of borders in the colonial situation. The divides, hesaid, were based on two opposite methods: that of the early

s en France, 1878e1930, Paris, 2002, 297e298.

3.

angue française, Paris, 2008, 94.euxième partie Sahara e Afrique occidentalex Paris, 1939, tome 1, 23.

09, 197e199.

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colonizers and that of the diplomats. To facilitate the organizationof the colonized territories, the early colonizers had had to keep thelocal populations within clear units. According to the logic of theirconquest, theywould have sought to determine the extent of ethnicareas on the ground, and thus demarcate space accordingly.46

Natural settings had been respected insofar as they had enabled thecolonizers to use the traditional structures of authority.47 Opposedto these early colonizers were the diplomats, drawing lines onmapsin areas that they saw as empty, creating in many places borderswhich were said to be the ‘result of an initial misunderstanding,neither natural nor ethnic nor economic but purely conventional.They are opposed to life and for this reason remain unsettled andfragile’.48 Rather than basing boundaries on the principles ofhuman geography and ethnicity, according to Hardy, the diplomaticlogic was purely arbitrary.

A further aspect of the critical discourse on the territorialconfigurations created by the colonial situation was reflected inDelavignette’s work. In his book Afrique occidentale française,written for the Colonial Exposition of 1931, Delavignette wrote ofthe territorial organization of French West Africa:

46 G. H47 Har48 Har49 Del50 Del51 We52 R. G53 Sing54 Ber55 Ber

Such colonies are purely administrative lots. A decree hascreated them. A new decree can abolish them. They do notcorrespond, in general, to natural zones or single races. (.) Itseems that a Jacobean will has cut and sliced up the countryand its people.49

Here we find the essence of what has become a familiardiscourse portraying African borders as lofty administrative divi-sions. Delavignette even concluded by mentioning the ‘territoriesthat we have arbitrarily defined’.50 This perspective was alsopresent in Weulersse’s work. Criticizing colonial boundaries,notably in his book L’Afrique noire, published in the collectionLa géographie pour tous (1934), Weulersse wrote:

Europe has tailored it to her pleasure, following the randomcourse of her diplomatic niceties. Thus was arranged thepolitical suit with which the African giant was dressed. But,what has been so easily stitched can become unsewn inmuch the same way. Such clear-cut borders, such precisecontours should fool no-one.51

The common ground shared by Augustin Bernard, GeorgeHardy, Robert Delavignette and Jacques Weulersse may reflect thefact that these men belonged to the second or third colonialgeneration. The new generations of directors and observers of thecolonies apparently wished to pay more attention to the natives aspolitical and historical actors in the colonial context. They repre-sented what Raoul Girardet has called colonial humanism.52 Thiswas a movement, by which colonial conscience was called upon atthe instigation of some of its main actors, either scientists, politi-cians or writers. Delavignette and Weulersse who were of the thirdgeneration, were close to the reformist networks and partisans ofthe SFIO (French Section of the second Workers’ International) ofLéon Blum and Marius Moutet. They supported a new vision, that

ardy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre aux xixe et xxe siècles, Paris, 19dy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre (note 46), 411.dy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre (note 46), 412.avignette, Afrique occidentale française (note 2), 32.avignette, Afrique occidentale française (note 2), 33.ulersse, L’Afrique noire (note 2), 38.irardet, L’Idée coloniale en France de 1871 à 1962, Paris, 1972, 253e273.aravelou, Professer l’Empire (note 4), 155.nard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 421.nard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 442.

of a federal and decentralized Empire, based on a collaborationbetween the French and the colonized populations.53

From this point of view, the borders of Africa were the scars ofthe old methods of colonization that were now in the process ofbeing rejected; they were evidence of a coercive and arbitrary logicthat had been more concerned with imperialism and nationalgrandeur than with people and improving local environment.These critical views on African borders were thus connected to thegrowing intellectual distance between this interwar generation andthe preceding generation more concerned with the logic ofconquest. Civilians, scholars, teachers and administrators perceivedthe partition of Africa as the work of military pioneers bent onexpansion or of diplomats concerned above all with nationalprestige. In contrast, the new generation thought themselvesprimarily interested in the development and welfare of the localpopulations. The old divides within African territory were thesymbols of the arbitrary action of Europe on the peoples of Africa.These men supported instead the idea of a humane form of colo-nization. The very meaning of colonization had thus changed and,when looking back at the way borders had been traced, it wasdifficult for the younger generation to get to grips with past logics.When observing the map of West Africa, they could no longerunderstandwhat hadmotivated the apparently absurd divides theyhad inherited. For these men, who had field knowledge of Africa, itsborders appeared to have been arbitrarily drawn in Paris, in thebureaus and departments very far afield from the genuine realities.

With the exception of George Hardy, these experts seemed to berelatively unaware of the extent of the work that had in fact beenconducted in the field and amongst the populations at the time ofconquest.Nordid theygenerally suppose thatexistingbordersmay insome cases have followed pre-existing African political boundaries.This may be partly explained by the relatively little publicity given tofieldwork and local negotiations during the preceding era of imperialexpansion. These negotiations were scarcely ever mentioned in thecolonial newspapers, in the articles of scientific journals or in theBulletin du comité de l’Afrique française. These media preferred topresent the issues of delimitation, demarcation and jurisdiction asa purely European affair. Finally, the new humanist perspective andfocus on the Africanpeople advocated by the newgeneration had theparadoxical effect of erasing the history of African political structuresand the role of the local populations in defining colonial boundaries.Though their perspective was to expose the authoritarian and coer-cive aspects ofprior colonial rule, their visionofAfricawasalsodeeplynourished by colonial prejudice.

Borders and the specificity of the African soul

The history and lifestyle of African peoples, as depicted by Bernard,were marked by the effects of climatic determinism. He believed thepeople ofWestAfricawere but an ‘amalgamof peoples’ and that itwasdifficult to ‘see through such chaos’.54 In Sudan, he said that the raceshad disappeared, but that nations had not yet appeared.55 He alsostressed that there were no ‘natural regions in West Africa, only

37, 410.

Fig. 4. Map of the administrative division of a natural region (R. Delavignette, Afrique occidentale française, Paris, 1931, 29).

C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202200

indeterminate areas of climate and vegetation’.56 Faced with suchindeterminacy, the early colonizers had vaguely imposed boundariesbut were doomed to fail since the regional organization of local spacecould not be clearly established at a timewhen the populations of theregionwere at an intermediate stage, totallyoblivious of raceornation.For Bernard, if arbitrary borders had indeed been drawn during theearly years of colonization, thiswas asmuchdue to the inferior stageofcivilization of the indigenous populations as to the brutal nature of thetransformations introduced by colonization in the area.

56 Bernard, Géographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 447.57 Hardy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre (note 46), 408e409.58 G. Hardy, Vues générales de l’Histoire d’Afrique, Paris, (1923) 1942, xiii.59 Hardy, Vues générales de l’Histoire d’Afrique (note 58).60 ‘However, the political units that form around these central regions and are quick toles bords de l’oasis ou de la clairière]. They rarely find those natural borders that we haveencounter to stop or protect them, mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees or the Alps orthem and, provided they outweigh their neighbors in energy, their domination can advaHardy, Vues générales de l’Histoire d’Afrique (note 58), xvi.

Hardy, meanwhile, claimed that the very concept of border wasunknown in Africa before the era of colonization.57 His opinion wasthat Africa offered only a few ill-defined natural areas that had so farbeenbadly stakedout and that therewerenohistorical regionsworthmentioning.58 In his mind, the whole continent was but a successionof climatic zones giving rise to alternately nomadic or sedentarypopulations.59 In such a climatic setting, where natural boundariesdid not exist, political units unchallenged by determined oppositionon the ground had grown up as do ‘mushroom-empires’.60 Hardy

jump over the edge of an oasis or of a clearing [qui ont tôt fait de sauter par-dessusbeen accustomed to consider as the prerequisites of strength and time; they do notwaters such as the Rhine or the Mediterranean; the whole climate zone is open tonce like a rain storm on an immense open field. These are the mushroom-empires’:

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believed that it was the determinants of climate and the lack ofnatural boundaries that at least partly explained the bizarre insta-bility of African dominions. In such a troubled setting, human groupsneither had the timenor the opportunity to intermingle andhad thusretained their ethnic individuality.61 Race thus took precedence overeverything in Africa, whilst in Europe contemporary political unitswere built by racially-mixed populations.62 Due to the absence ofnatural and historic areas, of geographic and human boundaries,European settlement had caused in this perspective a completereversal ofgeographicalvalues.63Thedefinitionofbordersbycolonialpowers, according to Hardy, generated in Africa a hitherto unknownfeeling: that of a link between consciousness of race and occupationof land. This discourse, profoundly marked by geographical andclimatic determinism and essentialism, envisaged a continent wherenature was indeterminate, political units unstable and human orga-nization still racial. According to Hardy, a territorial organizationalong ethnic lines would be the only solution.

Delavignette, for his part, denounced an arbitrary colonial orga-nization which corresponded neither to the boundaries of humangroups nor to natural areas.64 It was, however, in the name of anideal of ethnic homogeneity that he criticized the configurationscreated by colonization. In his opinion, African borders should havebeen defined by homogenous races or geographic regions. He thuspresented a map showing how internal administrative boundarieshad divided what he saw as a natural region.65 He continued hisanalysis by noting that the entities created by colonization weresimilar in nature to the départements of metropolitan France. Butwhereas in France, the département is for the peasant a source ofpride and a daily reference, for the ‘naturals’ of Africa (as he calledthem), it meant nothing because it was an imported concept.66 Inthe sameway, for Delavignette, true Frenchmen could only originatefrom small villages, and true Africans belonged to tribes.67

Beyond the field of the colonial sciences, the idea of the speci-ficity of African borders appeared in the work of other geographerswho were neither experts on colonies nor on Africa. Jacques Ancel,a disciple of Vidal de la Blache with expertise on the Balkans,developed an analysis in his Géographie des frontières based on therelationships between geography and ethnicity and on the recip-rocal interactions between environments and societies.68 Hedevoted several pages to the limits of primitive societies, for whomthe modern concept of border was unknown. This was, he wrote,the casewith nomadic and forest societies and in particular those tobe found in Africa.69 Basically, his argument was that genres de viedepended on modes of material production: because the societiesin such regions lacked the means of producing clearly-definedterritories within their environment, they could not organizethemselves into nation-states. This viewwas rooted in the theory ofthe primacy of environmental determinants, and in Vidalian theory.

61 Hardy, Vues générales de l’Histoire d’Afrique (note 58), xvi.62 Hardy, Vues générales de l’Histoire d’Afrique (note 58), xviiI.63 Hardy, Vues générales de l’Histoire d’Afrique (note 58), xix.64 Delavignette, Afrique occidentale française (note 2), 31.65 Delavignette, Afrique occidentale française (note 2), 29 (Fig. 4).66 Delavignette, Afrique occidentale française (note 2), 32.67 V. Dimier, Le Commandant de Cercle: un expert en administration coloniale, un spé68 P.Y. Pechoux and M. Sivignon, Jacques Ancel (1882e1943) géographe entre-deux-(note 15), 217.69 ‘Human groups find themselves isolated within an immense natural environment. Tprimitive societies, for whom the forest, the mountain range, the sea represent unfathomthe globe, who never try to meet one another. The rudimentary mechanisms of these fa border was born when two such groups finally met. The border was more like the fentoday’s jurists would have it’: J. Ancel, Géographie des frontières, Paris, 1938, 8.70 M.A. Suremain, L’Afrique en revues: le discours africaniste français, des sciences coloni1919e1946, Doctoral thesis, University Paris VII, 2001, 342e345.71 M.A. Suremain, Cartographie coloniale et encadrement des populations en Afrique,

Finally, it was the fixed and permanent aspects of the relationshipsbetween man and his environment that were advanced by Ancel todescribe territorial relations in Africa.

More generally, critiques of colonial boundaries appeared toreflect the common assumptions of the day: a generalized climaticdeterminism, the idea of the otherness of Africa, and finally thenotion that the essence of Africans is to be found in their ethnicity.The argument that colonial boundaries were inadequate to dealwith variations in the natural environment or in human organiza-tion sprung ultimately from these preconceptions. The interwarperiod thus seems to be the period of a paradigmatic shift. The firstgeneration of soldiers and administrators had been pragmaticallylooking for historicalepolitical forms of organization on which tobase their rule. In contrast, the later generation of authors inspiredby the idea that ethnic groups are clearly identifiable and circum-scribed within territories. After the First World War, ethnologicaland anthropological work showed a renewed interest in thesystematic classification of people. These studies were accompa-nied by a growth in the production of monographs describing thecharacteristics of a given population from an essentialist point ofview.70 The idea that spatial divisions within Africa could have beenestablished without taking into account its ethnic organizationseemed absurd to the new generation. Indeed, the development ofethnographic mapping clearly highlighted the obvious mismatchbetween colonial boundaries and ethnic groups.71 However, theessentialisation of Africa on the basis of distinct ethnic groupsevacuated all local political realities and erased all historicalperspective in favor of a logic that presented human organizationsin Africa as based on fundamentally immutable family structures.

Conclusion

The interwar period was a methodological turning point in thestudy of African boundaries. The logics that guided the meaningand discourse on borders in general changed, and a new set ofassumptions and practical knowledge created a fresh paradigm forthe drawing up of borders. After the First World War, defining anarea was a matter of exposing its character and its underlyinghuman unity. The formalization of territories and borders wasdominated by ethno-linguistic criteria that became the analyticalframework for dividing space. This was themoment of triumph forthe idea that the political boundaries of a state were best arrangedwhen they coincided with those of a nation characterized byethnic and linguistic homogeneity. The discourse concerningAfrican borders was thus based on the same premises as thosethat had been used in Europe, where the aim was also to deviseboundaries corresponding to ethnicity and language. But whereas

cialiste de l’indigène? Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines 10 (2004) 42.guerres (1919e1945), in: Claval, Sanguin (Ed), La géographie à l’époque classique

hey rarely meet and thus have no use for border lines. This is the case with manyable borders. It is instructive to study these molecular groups, limited to a corner oformless and boundless states can be seized and so to can be understood, the wayce of a landowner than a divide between two states, or a “limit in competency”, as

ales aux sciences sociales (anthropologie, ethnologie, géographie humaine, sociologie),

Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 324e325 (1999) 37e47.

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in Europe the failure to reach this ideal was explained by theproblem of minorities, Africa on the other hand was redefined byits otherness, reflecting the primacy of climatic and ethnicdeterminism. The idea of the peoples’ right to self governmentwhich in Europe went hand in hand with the principle ofnationalities was conspicuously absent from the discourses on theartificiality of African borders.

The critique of colonial boundaries in Africa resulted from therealization that the ideal congruence of ethnicity, language andterritory had been violated by the effects of colonial partition. Thiswas the discourse of a new generation of scholars, who wished todistance themselves from the earlier idealization of the act ofconquest and truly believed in the need for a humanist reform ofthe colonial system. Although their arguments aimed, among otherthings, to criticize the authoritarian and coercive aspects of colo-nization, their discourse also helped build the image of an Africa asabsolutely alien and unique. This was because their criticismsconcerning the partition of Africa did not critique colonizationitself, but rather its past methods. Furthermore, by marking Africanterritorial organization with the stamp of colonial artificiality, thenew generation denied Africa of a history which could, with time,

have served a national or political discourse. Finally, by treating thecolonial territories as purely the products of European conquestundertaken only a few decades earlier and by seeking to re-establish African borders purely on the basis of European ratio-nality, Africans were denied the ability to build their own politicaldestiny.

The influence and aura of those who theorized African colo-nial borders in the 1930s played a prominent role in thedissemination of the idea of their artificiality. Delavignette andHardy, as directors of the École Coloniale, participated in thetraining of the last generations of administrators. Jacques Weu-lersse also taught geography in the école nationale de la Franced’Outre Mer, the école nationale des langues orientales vivantes,the institut d’ethnologie and the école libre des sciences politiques.The idea of artificiality, developed and articulated by suchinfluential voices, reinforced the image of a downtrodden Africa,irrationally partitioned by all-powerful European colonizers. Italso confirmed the balance of power existing under colonial ruleand became paradoxically, in the 1950s, the template of anti-colonial discourse. It still haunts much of today’s thinking aboutAfrica.