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From Colonisation to Avénement: Henri Brunschwig and the History of Afrique Noire*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

John Hargreaves
John Hargreaves
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
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Extract

Henri Brunschwig (1904–1989) began his career as a notable historian of Germany but became an influential pioneer of African studies in France, first at the Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer (1948–60) and thereafter at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. His own research ranged from Brazza's role in the French occupation of equatorial Africa to the part played by Africans in establishing and sustaining French colonial rule. His lucid and original works of synthesis helped greatly to bring an evolving body of knowledge about the African past into the frame of modern world history. His emphasis both on rigorous standards of source-criticism and on the need for broad horizons in time and space continues to exercise authority over historians in France, Africa, and beyond.

Type
Appreciation
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , November 1990 , pp. 347 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 See his interview with Blussé, L. and Wesseling, H. L. in Itinerario (1978) 2, 28–30.Google Scholar

2 Brunschwig, H., La crise de l'État prussien à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et la genèse de la mentalité romantique (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar; 2nd edition translated as Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Chicago, 1974).Google Scholar

3 Itinerario (1978), 30–1.

4 Brunschwig, H., La colonisation française, du pacte colonial à l'Union française (Paris, 1949).Google Scholar Its conclusion (p. 273) is of some historical interest: ‘C'est notre culture que les indigènes réclameront, qu'ils accepteraient, pour la plupart encore, qu'ils repousseront peut-être demain. Ils deviendront sûrement tôt ou tard politiquement indépendants. Ils le deviendront par nous ou contre nous’.

5 Brunschwig, H., L'expansion allemande outre-mer du xve siècle à nos jours (Paris, 1957), 81.Google Scholar

6 Brunschwig, H., ‘Le monde à l'heure de la décolonisation: politique française et anglaise’, Annates, XII (1957), 380–92.Google Scholar Brunschwig may have been guided towards this view by the emphasis on continuities in a book by his colleague at ENFOM, the colonial humanist Labouret, Henri, Colonisation, Colonialisme, Decolonisation (Paris, 1952).Google Scholar

7 Brunschwig, H., Mythes et réalités de l'impérialisme colonial français, 1871–1914 (Paris, 1960), 187–88.Google Scholar

8 Brunschwig, H., ‘Un faux problème: l'Ethno-histoire’, Annales, xx (mai 1965).Google Scholar

9 Brunschwig, H. (ed.), Brazza explorateur, l'Ogooué, 1875–1879 (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar; Brazza explorateur, les traités Makoko, 1880–82 (Paris, 1972).Google Scholar A third volume in this sequence, edited by Catherine Coquery, appeared in 1969; a fourth, Brazza Commissaire-Général, edited by Elizabeth Rabut, in 1988.

10 Brunschwig, H., L'avènement de l'Afrique noire du xix siècle à nos jours (Paris, 1963).Google Scholar

11 Brunschwig, H., Le partage de l'Afrique noire (Paris, 1971).Google Scholar

12 Braudel, F., Introduction, Études africaines offertes à Henri Brunschwig (Paris, 1982), ix.Google Scholar

13 Brunschwig, , L'avènement, 131.Google Scholar

14 Brunschwig, H., ‘De l'assimilation à la décolonisation’, in Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, Les chemins de la décolonisation de l'empire colonial français (Colloque du 4–5 octobre 1984: Paris, 1986), 51–2.Google ScholarBrunschwig, H., Noirs et blancs dans l'Afrique noire française (Paris, 1983).Google Scholar

15 The valuable bibliography by David Gardinier in Études africaines offertes à Henri Brunschwig, xx–xxii, does not cover his considerable output during the 1980s. Some of Brunschwig's more influential articles were collected and published in 1988 under the title L'Afrique noire au temps de l'empire français.