We have tailored Africa: French colonialism and the articiality of Africas

borders in the interwar period

Camille Lefebvre
CNRSeCEMAf, ANR Frontafrique, France
Abstract
After the First World War, the discourse and methods used to determine and dene boundaries changed radically. In Europe, the territorial agreements of
1919-20 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 became
crucial in dening territory and therefore in political decision-making. At the same time, prominent representatives of the new colonial sciences were
responsible for developing and disseminating the idea of the 'articiality' of African boundaries. This new generation of experts on French colonization
considered 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 humanistic
rule. Their discourses, however, offered a vision of Africa based on the continent's exceptional character. In essence, Africa was considered as a continent
dened principally along ethnic territorial lines, a logic excluding any political denition of territory. This discourse contributed to redening the
continent as something radically other.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Borders; Boundaries; Africa; Colonialism; First World War; Nationality; Colonial sciences
Just as the destinies of the nations of Europe are once more on
the move, a capsized dugout, an outbreak of malaria, a lost
bearing, exhausted credit, stolen luggage or a dried-up well
suddenlybecome a reasonfor hesitation. Worldleaders intheir
capital cities reect upon this occasionally and are frightened
by this thought. They convene conferences, prepare and sign
agreements. (.) Fortresses, sentry boxes full of customs of-
cers, sometimes even barbed-wire fences today wait on the
roads traveled by the dauntless travelers of old. We have
introduced into what was an undivided wilderness, the para-
phernalia of our habits, of our mistrust, of our safety measures.
Franois Mitterrand, 1953
1
African borders were drawn with rulers and colored pencils on
inaccurate maps by diplomats intoxicated by their sense of supe-
riority. This is but one of many all-too-familiar ideas on African
borders.
2
Indeed, over the last forty years, the articiality of Africas
political boundaries has become an axiomatic and commonplace
feature of discourse on contemporary Africa. However, this
assumptionwas based on the dominant consensus in which African
borders were considered merely as consequences of domination;
that they were wholly imported products imposed without
discussion nor common-sense and in total deance of pre-existing
human structures and geography. The aim here is not to challenge
this 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 howthis theme became the
taken-for-granted norm and a standard discursive convention. This
paper does not pretend to identify the very rst utterance of the
discourse, but rather attempts to re-trace the rationale underlying
the emergence of this consensus in the French-speaking world. This
requires us to identify the moment when the discourse was rst
E-mail address: camillelefebvre@yahoo.fr
1
F. Mitterrand, Aux frontires de lUnion Franaise. Indochine-Tunisie, Paris, 1953, 19e20.
2
The title to this paper combines two formulae. The rst is by Robert Delavignette who spoke of territories that we have arbitrarily staked out, R. Delavignette, Afrique
occidentale franaise, Paris, 1931, 32. The second is by Jacques Weulersse who wrote: Europe has tailored Africa to her pleasure, J. Weulersse, LAfrique noire, Paris, 1934, 38.
3
Reconsidering this commonplace was one of the main axes of my doctoral thesis: C. Lefebvre, Territoires et frontires. Du Soudan central la Rpublique du Niger
1800e1964, Doctoral thesis, Universit Paris 1, 2008. On the French side, Pierre Boilley and Michel Fouchers works, and on the English-speaking side Paul Nugents, have
enabled to completely rethink African borders today. M. Foucher, Linvention des frontires, Paris, 1987; M. Foucher, Fronts, frontires. Un tour du monde gopolitique, Paris
(1988), 1994; P. Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionist and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier. The Lie of the Borderland Since 1914, Athens/Ohio, 2002; A. Asiwaju, P. Nugent
(Eds), The Paradox of African Boundaries, London, 1996; P. Boilley, Du royaume au territoire, des terroirs la patrie ou la lente construction formelle et mentale de lespace
malien, in: C. Dubois, M. Michel, P. Soumille (Eds), Frontires plurielles, frontires conictuelles, Paris, 2000, 27e48.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Historical Geography
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ j hg
0305-7488/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2010.11.004
Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202
accepted, while simultaneously analyzing its intellectual and
political foundations. In order to understand the logic behind the
discourse on the articiality of African borders, analysis of this
discourse will be combined with the study of the practices, political
events and institutions which nurtured it. The history of discourses
and the history of the practices related to them will thus be inter-
twined. In this way the experiences that fueled these ideas, the
places in which they were circulated, how they were actually used,
and with what effects, will become clear.
It was between First and Second World Wars that this idea of the
articiality of Africas borders emerged. At this time, several
scholars associated with colonial institutions and the colonial
milieux more generally developed the idea that colonial activities
in Africa had carved up the land into arbitrary lots. They promoted
these ideas in a variety of published works, including widely-read
books and journals. The construction and dissemination of this
discourse should be situated within several intricately linked
contexts: the post-war reconstruction in Europe and of the
1919e1920 territorial agreements; the colonial heyday paradoxi-
cally linked to the beginnings of a radical questioning of colo-
nialism; and nally, the institutional and public coming of age of
the colonial sciences.
4
In France, African borders, both intra-
colonial (administrative) and inter-colonial (political), and the
territorial congurations created by colonization, became a subject
of debate. To understand the full complexity of discourses at the
time, it will be necessary to reconstruct the relationships between
these different contexts.
Drawing the right borders
Before analyzing the emergence of a Francophone discourse on the
articiality of African borders, it is necessary rst to consider the
ideas and practices that served to dene borders in Europe and in
the colonies at the time. Indeed, the interwar period was a time of
reinvention and transformation of the very idea of borders and of
substantial innovation in the methods and practices used to dene
them. Views on what constituted an ideal boundary began to
change. The preference for strong strategic limits was modied in
the light of prevailing socio-economic patterns, with nation-based
or ethnographic criteria emerging alongside conventional criteria.
5
An era of territorial agreements throughout Europe began with the
end of the First World War. The breakup of the former multina-
tional empires provided the opportunity for creating new states
and for dening their borders in international fora, such as the 1919
Paris Peace Conference. For the French colonial authorities, the war
had brought the major period of imperial expansion to a close. With
the period of conquest complete, they declared it time for the
pacication and exploitation of French Africa. In Europe as in
Africa, territorial structures were undergoing redenition: space
was re-conceptualized according to newoutlooks, assumptions and
methods and new borders were consequently drawn.
Redrawing the boundaries of Europe along national lines
The redrawing of political borders in Central and Eastern Europe
and the reorientation of international relations and international
law around the Wilsonian idea of the right of nations to self-
determination inaugurated a new era of boundary-making.
6
In
order to draw boundaries acceptable for the new states and thus
capable of guaranteeing future peace, the expertise of the social
sciences was called for. In France, this concerned historians and
more particularly geographers working for the Comit dtudes of
the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
7
This committee, created by
Aristide Briand in 1917, was designed to give shape to the territorial
aims of France and its allies in anticipation of post-war negotia-
tions. Indeed, French geography and especially French human
geography, helped to formulate the desired proposals and solu-
tions, even if in the end strategic and political issues were
predominant. Rather than assessing the inuence and weight of
this expertise in the decisions made, what matters here is under-
standing the geographical discourse used by the scientists involved
in the plotting of the new political map. Issues concerning military
strategy, economics and historical land rights were part of the
debates. However, the principle of nationality and that of the
peoples right to self-determination were the primary bases of
negotiation and represented the criteria usually accepted by all the
experts of the Comit dtudes.
Territorial nationalism was based on the idea that a necessary
congruence existed between language, ethnicity and territory. This
led to attempts to subdivide the whole continent into coherent
territorial states, each inhabited by distinct, ethnically and
linguistically homogeneous populations.
8
The consensus was that
states should ideally be based on the overlapping of political and
national unity and that state boundaries should coincide with those
of nationalities and languages. It was thought that wherever lay
a language, lay a nation; and that the area covered by a language
marked the scope of a nation. At the Versailles peace conference
(1919e1920), the new ideas of linguistic boundaries, under the
pretext of national self-determination, came to full prominence.
9
In
respect of all these professed principles, experts, such as the
geographers E. de Martonne for the French or J. Cvijic for the Serbs
were thus asked to determine specic borders corresponding to
clear-cut anthropo-geographical criteria.
10
Their aim, even if they
disagreed on interpretations, was inuenced by the idea of iden-
tifying homogeneous groups and to have local borders coincide
with their limits. The careful observation and study of the territorial
distribution of local populations was supposed to allow responsible
border divides. To make such decisions, ethnographic maps, visu-
alizing the spatial distribution of human groups and of linguistic
4
This category was used by French commentators in the rst half of the twentieth century. It referred then to all the sciences devoted to the study of colonialism or
colonized areas. On the use this category see: P. Singaravelou, Professer lEmpire. Lenseignement des sciences coloniales en France sous la IIIe Rpublique, Doctoral thesis,
University Paris 1, 2007, 38e40.
5
R.N. Schoeld, Laying it down in stone: delimiting and demarcating Iraqs boundaries by mixed international commission, Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 404.
6
C. Baechler, C. Fink (Eds), Ltablissement des frontires en Europe aprs les deux guerres mondiales, Bern, 1996; G.-H. Soutou, La Premire Guerre mondiale: une rupture
dans lvolution de lordre europen, Politique trangre 65 (2000) 847.
7
For further reading on this matter: M. Foucher, Les gographes et les frontires, Hrodote 33e34 (1984) 117e130; J. Bariety, La Grande Guerrre (1914e1919) et les
gographes franais, Relations Internationales 109 (2002) 7e24; T. Ter Minassian, Les gographes franais et la dlimitation des frontires balkaniques la Confrence de la
Paix en 1919, Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine 44 (1997) 252e286; M. Heffernan, The spoils of war: the Socit de Gographie de Paris and the French empire
1914e1919, in: M. Bell, R. Butlin, M. Heffernan (Eds), Geography and Imperialism: 1820e1940, Manchester/New York, 1995, 221e264; O. Lowczyk, Lhistorien et le diplomate en
1919: lusage des sciences historiques dans la ngociation pour les frontires de la France, Guerres mondiales et conits contemporains 236 (2009) 27e44.
8
E. Hobsbawm, Nations et nationalisme depuis 1780, Paris, 1990, 2006, 246.
9
N.C. Guy, Linguistic boundaries and geopolitical interests: the Albanian boundary commissions, 1878e1926, Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 463.
10
E. Boulineau, Les gographes et les frontires austro-slovnes des Alpes orientales en 1919e1920: entre la Mitteleuropa et les Balkans, Revue de Gographie alpine 4 (2001)
173e184.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 192
facts, were produced so that all major spatial discontinuities could
be readily identied.
11
But this program of constructing homogeneous territorial
nations through the production of rational ethnic boundaries based
on linguistic criteria quickly became impractical. As early as 1913,
the use of language as the sole criteria to determine ethnographic
identity and thereby to dene international boundaries had already
appeared problematic to the southern boundary commission in
Albania, as so many people in the region were bilingual or trilin-
gual.
12
The identication of uniform ethnic and linguistic groups
was constantly offset by the mingling of peoples and languages.
Moreover, the consideration of areas as ethnically homogeneous
sometimes clashed with higher economic, strategic or geopolitical
interests. If the theoretical denition of a border based on the
perfect congruence between state, ethnicity and language was
admitted by all, in the end the political decisions were generally
based upon geopolitical interest rather than on these principles.
Nonetheless these theories were considered as an ideal, even if
they were often impossible to implement. This model continued to
shape the idea of borders and territory throughout the rst half of
twentieth century.
13
A second criterion was also at the heart of the interwar debates
over boundary-making, especially in the arguments of French
geographers. This was the idea of the region, as it was understood
by Vidal de la Blache. Although the term region itself was rarely
used, it was a regional approach that largely specied the analysis
of French expert geographers in border matters.
14
The prevalence of
this notion can be seen in the majority of geographical studies of
the time. Typically many PhD theses of the period did their best to
demonstrate the specicity of limited geographical areas.
15
Based
on Vidalian theory, the idea was that any territorial space was
divisible into units, the coherence of which sprung from environ-
mental factors and the distinctiveness of which could scientically
be identied. The geographic region was, in this perspective,
a homogeneous physical area built around human, economic and
political networks. It was seen as forming a whole in which local
population and local environment created sustainable and
harmonious combinations. This geographical analysis also consid-
ered that what generated the internal unity of a territory carried
more weight than what dened its borders. It was thus the weak-
ening cohesion of a region at its margins that was seen as marking
areas of discontinuity. Such an approach also tended to essentialize
space through a logic that built territories around regional identi-
ties rather than political entities. This logic nonetheless tted
perfectly well with the rst principle of nationality, which it simply
displaced at another level.
Post-1918 territorial agreements in Europe were thus marked by
several developments in the methods and logics used to dene
borders. Four of these are particularly important: rst the inuence
of scientists and particularly the involvement of geographers in the
debates; secondly, the emphasis placed on the expertise of social
sciences in the processes of decision making; thirdly, the desire to
establish viable states to ensure stability and peace; and, nally, the
dominance of a consensus concerning the principle of nationality
and the concept of geographic region. While strategic, defensive or
economic criteria still often carried more diplomatic weight, from
the point of view of scientic theory, it was the principle of
congruence between state, nation and territory and the associated
concept of region that held sway.
Rethinking the puzzle of French West Africa
The First World War also marked the nal phase of French imperial
expansion, and thus a new phase of colonial rule in French Africa,
where space was once more redened. Territorial congurations e
regardless of their scale ehad been seen by the colonial authorities
and administrators since the early days of French expansion in
Africa as temporary productions supposed to evolve according to
future 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 to
changing conditions and stakes. However, the switch from military
to civil administration and the transition froma logic of conquest to
a logic of occupation transformed the objectives of the colonizers
and changed French colonial ways of seeing, re-dening African
territory and borders. The rise of a developmental French colo-
nialism led to the theoretical denition of territory no longer
simply by strategic or military means but also on the basis of
humanistic and economic criteria.
Through the latter part of the war, it became increasingly
apparent that its resolution would lead to a redistribution of colo-
nial territory between the victorious Allied powers. Preparation for
post-war negotiations has been gathering pace since 1916 and the
services of leading academic authorities eincluding geographers e
were much in demand to help formulate war aims and colonial
demands.
16
Within the federation of French West Africa, a variety of
more or less utopian projects arose aimed at re-dening local
territorial congurations. As early as 1916, proposals for the post-
war division of the German colonies amongst the allies, bringing
about major territorial reorganization within Africa, were being
debated. The lobbyists of the Committee of French Africa and
especially their General Secretary, Augustin Terrier, suggested that
France should not only take possession of the German territories,
but should also seek to acquire the territories occupied by neutral
allies so as to achieve the complete unication of West Africa.
17
Meanwhile, the Geographical Society of Paris brought together
academic geographers and businessmen within committees
preparing memoranda for future peace treaties.
18
One of these
projects was solely devoted to nding the best way of ousting
Germany from Africa and to considering the territorial changes this
would engender.
When the war did come to an end, negotiations about the
reallocation of German colonial territories encouraged Governor
General Angoulvant to imagine all kinds of exotic congurations.
19
11
G. Palsky, Emmanuel de Martonne and the Ethnographical Cartography of Central Europe (1917e1920), Imago Mundi 54 (2002) 111e119; E. Boulineau, Un gographe
traceur de frontires: Emmanuel de Martonne et la Roumanie, Lespace gographique 4 (2001) 358e369.
12
Guy, Linguistic boundaries and geopolitical interests (note 9), 458.
13
Hobsbawm, Nations et nationalisme (note 8), 246e253.
14
Boulineau, Un gographe traceur de frontires (note 11), 362; Minassian, Les gographes franais et la dlimitation des frontires balkaniques (note 7), 252e286.
15
P. Claval, Continuit et mutations dans la gographie rgionale de 1920 1960, in: P. Claval, A.L. Sanguin (Eds), La gographie lpoque classique (1918e1968), Paris, 1996,
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 19 (1978) 12.
18
Bariety, La Grande Guerre (1914e1919) et les gographes franais (note 7), 13; Heffernan, The spoils of war (note 7), 225e253.
19
At the time, Gabriel Angoulvant was the temporary Governor General of French West Africa and of French Equatorial Africa. More on this topic can be found in: A.L.
Conklin, Democracy rediscovered: civilization through association in French West Africa (1914e1930), Cahiers dtudes Africaines 37e145 (1997) 62.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 193
He suggested swapping British Togo for Gambia, Sierra Leone for
Dahomey, Liberia for the eastern marches of Niger e Gour,
NGuigmi and Lake Chad e and, nally, to abandon to the Italian
allies the northern and eastern parts of Niger.
20
His grand idea was
to create a more homogeneous and coherent French territory. In
1917, the Governor General Clozel had developed a similar project
when he suggested that the borders of West Africa should be
redrawn to take into account its human organization and economic
geography.
21
In a territorially ideal world, he thought that Nigeria
should be taken from Britain and absorbed by French Equatorial
Africa.
22
As for Colonel Maurice Abadie in 1927, he proposed to
dismantle the colony of Niger and to separate it into the Colony of
Middle Niger straddling the River Niger and a Middle Africa under
the aegis of French Equatorial Africa.
23
This project, however, was
considered as non-sustainable and was quickly abandoned. In 1932,
Governor General Brvi also developed a comprehensive reorga-
nization program, which envisaged the abolition of Upper Volta
and the fusion of Mauritania and Senegal
24
. Ultimately, only the
rst part of the project was implemented. In 1937, Governor
General Coppet established yet another reorganization project. He
reactivated the idea of the fusion of Senegal and Mauritania and
proposed, for the same reasons, that Dahomey and Niger should be
linked. 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 similar
logic, which was basically to improve the homogeneity of French
West Africa, its human organization and its economic performance
by reducing the costs of occupation and facilitating movement
within the Federation.
Dening natural and human regions in the colonies
The same willingness to rethink the territorial structures was
exhibited at the colonial level during interwar years. This is clearly
highlighted, for example, in the case of Niger. With a European
colonial personnel (military and administrative combined) of
barely 220 men, for more than one million inhabitants and an area
of 1,200,000 square kilometers, Niger was a very under-adminis-
tered territory. In order to fully grasp the logic and activities of
colonial administration in territorial matters in this area, two cases
which exemplify the broader pattern of reorganization during the
interwar period will be examined. At this local scale, broadly
comparable practises and ideas were developed, including the use
of experts and scientically-based arguments and the aim of con-
structing economic and ethnic homogenous spaces. If during the
period of conquest French soldiers had pragmatically relied on
existing political and territorial structures to advance their inter-
ests, the new generation approached these spaces with new ideas
and 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 to
clarify the situation of the Tibesti region, located at the junction of
French Equatorial Africa, French West Africa and Libya. This
mountain territory was still largely unknown to Europeans. There
were no established outposts and its connes remained mostly
uncontrolled and undened. However, the conquest of Fezzan by
the Italians in 1926 changed the balance of the situation. The Ital-
ians were able to establish outposts where there was then no trace
of French occupation and consequently they could claim superior
rights to those of France in this mountain territory. For the French, it
therefore became urgently necessary to determine the status of the
border area. With this in mind, a survey party led by Captain Rottier
was organized. Rottier had been specially recommended by
Governor Brvi to the Governor General because of his several
expeditions in the Tibesti Mountains and because he had earlier
published a report on Eastern Sahara.
25
Brvi believed that Rottier
was better qualied than anyone else [..] because of his knowl-
edge of this area and its people.
26
Having accomplished his survey
mission, Rottier wrote a report in which he gave his opinion as to
the best territorial organization for the area. Indeed, most of his
forty-page report strove to establish the geographical existence of
two distinct regions within what was usually called Tibesti. Rottier
distinguished the Tchiga region, inhabited by the Gounda tribe,
whose activities were oriented toward French West Africa, and the
Tibesti Mountains per se, inhabited by Touzoubas and Toma-
ghras.
27
The line he recommended left the Tchiga and the Gounda
tribe to French West Africa and advocated that the Tibesti Moun-
tains should be part of French Equatorial Africa. The report was
presented to the Governor General, who was left to decide the
issue.
The separation of a region, and its passage from one jurisdiction
to another depending on the evolution of local context or on the
management of local problems, was not a new phenomenon in
the history of French territorial organization during colonization.
The occupier was constantly intent on improving the system and
thereby the effective control of the territory. But what is new is the
kind of arguments used in Captain Rottiers report. Analysis of what
was considered to be expert advice allows one to observe the
arguments and methods considered as conclusive at the time.
Indeed, what appears pre-eminent is the importance of geographic
arguments and the determining role of the idea of region. Rottier
built his proposal for a border on the delimitation of two
geographical and human regions and based it on a correspondence
between space, local population and the networks e mostly
commercial e constructed by this population. His arguments were
based on a geographical description, which was itself based on
observations made during his eld observations and his regional
surveys. Contrary to what was the case in the analyses of his
predecessors, references to any political or historical issues were
practically absent from Rottiers report. Thus, the denition of
territory ceased to stem simply from investigations and enquiries
with local populations, as had often been the case during the period
of conquest.
28
After the First World War, the expertise of the
colonial administrators was sufcient.
Internal administrative boundaries could also be reorganized.
By an Order of 28 March 1931, the northern part of the
20
Y. Marguerat, A quoi rvaient les Gouverneurs gnraux? Les projets de remembrement de lAfrique de louest pendant la Premire Guerre Mondiale, in: C. Becker,
S. Mbaye, I. Thioub (Eds), AOF: ralits et hritages, Dakar, 1997, 90e91.
21
A.L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, Stanford, 178.
22
Marguerat, A quoi rvaient les Gouverneurs gnraux? (note 20), 92.
23
M. Abadie, La Colonie du Niger, Paris, 1927, 357.
24
J.R. Benoist, La balkanisation de lAOF, Dakar, 1978, 42e45.
25
C. Rottier, Sahara oriental. Kaouar-Djado-Tibesti, Bulletin du Comit de lAfrique Franaise, janvier, 1924, 1e14.
26
ANN Archive Nationale du Niger (National Archive of Niger) 21. 0. 36, Correspondance relative au Tibesti, 1926, Lettre n

3854 AG/I, du 4 octobre 1926 M. le Gouverneur

Gnral de lAOF, direction des affaires politiques et administratives, cabinet militaire Dakar, 1.
27
ANN 1 E 10. 45, Rapport Rottier. Tibesti, 1927. Renseignement documentaire dordre divers: conomique, administratif, social, gographique, 1929.
28
Lefebvre, Territoires et frontires (note 3), 220e227 and 257e271.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 194
administrative Circles of Maradi and Zinder was split to create the
Circle of Tanout. The plan was to separate the nomadic and
sedentary populations. As Tanout should be inhabited exclusively
by nomads.
29
According to Lt. Pri, the aimwas to bring together
under one command roughly similar geographical, human and
economic regions.
30
The objective was to facilitate colonial
management by creating a homogeneous structure based on
human unity. Specic regions therefore had to be identied by the
colonial administration, along the preconceived lines of population
and lifestyle. But although this goal was perfectly logical, according
to the administrator Pri, reorganization was to prove a source of
considerable difculty. Indeed, the colonial administrators soon
realized that the new border cut all the vital lines of the region:
transportation routes, trade routes, north to south seasonal
Fig. 1. The changing shape of Niger during French colonization (C. Lefebvre, Territoires et frontires. Du Soudan central la Rpublique du Niger 1800e1964, Doctoral thesis, Universit
Paris 1, 2008, vol. 2, 189).
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, Pri, Maradi, 1945.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 195
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) 191e202 196
migratory routes, and allowed an entire population of pastoral
migrants to evade taxes and grazing duties.
31
The creation of the
subdivision of Tanout did not fulll its purpose and in no way made
administration any easier; even though its reorganization had been
based on the assumption that sedentary and nomadic lifestyles
were naturally incompatible, a powerful and enduring theme in
colonial administration. This distinction, however, once imple-
mented, revealed itself to be impracticable. In this region, the
sedentary and nomadic populations had complementary lifestyles
based on reciprocal exchanges.
Thus the outlooks determining the choices and methods of the
administration seem to have evolved after the initial period of
conquest. The military had, until then, taken into account the
dynamics of the local historical and political circumstances. These
were seenas the means of tracing lines that wouldbe acceptedbyall
andcouldefciently secure their ownrule anddomination. But local
societies were no longer perceived in this way. They were nowseen
in the light which Western science shone upon them. Territory was
not a matter of nding out what the local populations had to say
about it, but a question of building something that coincided with
the idea that the West had of these populations and their lifestyles.
The newgenerationof administrators thus based their denitions of
space on theoretical preconceptions inuenced by the idea of
geographical and human regions. These were seen as homogeneous
units built, as far as possible, along the lines of the supposed
geographical and human links. From then on, what administrators
thought no longer depended on local popular inquiries but on
observations, nourished by the geographical discourse of the day,
which linked together population, environment and lifestyle.
Finally, theeconomic arguments which, until that time, hadnot been
mentioned much or were secondary in the discourses of the early
colonizers were now given priority. The colonizers believed their
knowledge and analyses of territory to be sufciently precise to be
able determine what eaccording totheir owncriteria ewas best for
the local populations. Their observations and experience were
thought to offer sufcient knowledge of local societies to single-
handedly build territorial congurations capable of answering what
was thought to be the genuine needs of the people.
The above analysis of border-dening logics and practices in
Africa and Europe between the two world wars highlights several
common features. The rst was the desire to draw the best possible
boundaries, ones that facilitated administration and that improved
peoples lives; two aspects of any border that were thought, at the
time, to be closely interwoven. Old-fashioned strategic arguments
were immediately countered by a discourse inuenced by the new
theories of the social sciences idealizing ethnographic and linguistic
boundaries. A consensus soon emerged around the value of these
arguments in discussions of territorial organization. The second
common feature, in this perspective, was that the use of identied
experts became crucial. The experts legitimacy, that gave weight to
their words, could be obtained in two ways. It could be institutional
and 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 border
negotiations were either scientists having achieved successful
academic careers, such as E. De Martonne, or local administrators
and military men, considered as native population experts, insofar
as eld experience was also considered valid expertise. The disci-
plines of the social sciences andmore particularlygeographyshaped
the minds of all these men, whether academics or military or
administrators. They nourished the way they thought about space
and oriented their policy-making. Indeed, there seems to have been
widespread agreement concerning the ideal of a congruence
between particular human groups, language and territory and the
possibility of identifying such homogeneous units in spatial terms.
These two consensual ideas soon combined and came to reinforce
one another. Finally, there are differences in approach depending on
the scale of decision. At the level of State, colony or federation, the
logic of strategic, economic and geopolitics is followed, while at the
local scale concerns arecenteredonthe idea of natural region, ethnic
group andthe territoryassociated withthem. Inthis intellectual and
political context, some public gures regarded as specialists in
colonization and African geography began to criticize the territorial
division of the continent. Their arguments, the subject of the
following section, profoundly changed the image of Africa and of
African space in the Francophone world.
Challenging the wrong borders
During the interwar period, the nature and signicance of political
borders were a major issue of debate amongst intellectuals and
scientists in Europe following the geopolitical theories of Mack-
inder in Britain, Haushofer in Germany and in France Jacques
Ancels response to the German theories.
32
In the French context,
the discourse on boundaries included critical challenges to the
rationality of colonial borders in Africa. This theme appears in the
literature of the colonial sciences, a eld which was, at the time,
only just gaining institutional recognition. It does not seem to have
been prominent either in the reports of the administrators serving
in the eld, nor in the reports of the ofcial colonial bodies or even
in those associated with the colonial lobby at this time. The aim
here is to understand why and how this idea emerged in the
context of specialist expertise in the colonial sciences, and why it
eventually came to be accepted much more widely. This issue will
be approached by examining the modes of assessment and vali-
dation of the theories of the day, by analyzing what was at stake
behind these discourses and by seeking to understand why such
scientic statements were generally accepted.
A qualied discourse: the value of experience and scientic expertise
It was in the work of Augustin Bernard, George Hardy, Robert Dela-
vignette and Jacques Weulersse, four authors, whose work cover the
full scope of sciences devotedtothe study of colonialismandcolonies
between the two world wars, that the articiality of Africas colonial
borders appeared as a theme for the rst time. The ambition of the
French colonial sciences at the time was to build an autonomous
scientic eld of research, so contributing to the efcient adminis-
tration and economic prosperity of the colonies and legitimizing the
French colonial effort by exploiting the humanitarian dimension of
the Empire.
33
Scientic legitimacy, as the careers of these four men
indicate, thus derived from an academic cursus honorum as much as
from practical knowledge of the colonial territory.
Bernard, Hardy and Weulersse had all sat the agrgation in
history and geography and the latter two had equally graduated
from the cole normale. Weulersse had been trained at the cole
normale by the two prominent professors, Albert Demangeon and
Emmanuel de Martonne, while Bernard and Weulersse presented
their doctorates. By 1920, Bernard had become a renowned
31
ANN 14. 1. 2, Carnets monographique du cercle de Maradi.
32
Foucher, Fronts, frontires (note 3), 17e20.
33
Singaravelou, Professer lEmpire (note 4), 7.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 197
academic, a fully-edged professor of geography and colonization
of North Africa at the Sorbonne, the same University where
Demangeon and De Martonne, two of the most important repre-
sentatives of Vidalian geography also taught.
34
However, beyond the legitimacy acquired through success at
competitive exams and reputable university courses, it was in the
colonial eld that all four had acquired their rights as experts on
Africa. Bernard had been stationed in Algeria between 1894 and
1898 and then returned there regularly on eld missions. Hardy,
after having taught high school in Bourges and Orleans, secured
a position as inspector of education in French West Africa, which
rst 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 nor
a university degree. It was solely his eld experience and
knowledge of colonial realities that gave him his legitimacy. In
1919, he entered the colonial administration as an assistant in the
civil services. As a First World War veteran, he was offered a six-
month training course at the cole coloniale. His rst posting was
in Niger where he spent two years in Zinder as nancial admin-
istrator, then four more in Upper Volta.
36
He was also in the eld
during the reorganization of the territories of the French West
Africa in the early 1920s. When he returned to France in 1930, he
became a journalist and writer and published in 1931 the hugely
successful Les paysans noirs. Delavignette then led a double
career: he was simultaneously an administrator and a reputable
scholar.
37
In 1936, he was appointed as the head of staff/chef de
cabinet of Marius Moutet, the Minister of Overseas France. Weu-
lersse, nally, had no real colonial experience though he had been
awarded a travel grant that had enabled him to visit Africa and
spend two years e from 1928 to 1930 e traveling from Morocco to
South Africa, through Senegal, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and the French
and Belgian Congos.
The writings of these four men on the articiality of African
boundaries were published by the major publishing houses in
France, reecting their leading position in the eld of colonial
sciences between the two world wars. Indeed, the years between
1920 and 1930 represented the heyday of colonial publication, as
measured by the number of books published, of editors publishing
on 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 franaise in the
ofcial collection of the 1931 Colonial Exhibition. George Hardy
edited several collections for Larose, major publishers in the colo-
nial 1920s and one of the main outlets for publications in colonial
sciences. Works by Weulersse, Hardy and Delavignette were pub-
lished in collections aimed at a wide audience. Bernard, meanwhile,
published his thoughts on African borders in a volume of the
Gographie Universelle edited by Lucien Gallois and Vidal de la
Blache. His participation in this collective work marked the apex of
his career.
39
Each one of these unique biographies reveals the many different
ways it was possible to acquire legitimacy in the scientic eld of the
still very open colonial sciences between the two world wars: from
the self-taught technocrat-cum-successful writer, to the Sorbonne
Professor attracted by political expertise; from the specialist expert
on colonial education embodying the science of colonization to the
young traveling geographer from the cole normale. Their legitimacy
as experts of Africa sprung from the fact that their expertise in the
colonial system e that they either collaborated with or simply
observed e was judged to be authorized by their academic positions
or their experience of Africa. Although they themselves were all
observers of, or actors within, the structures of colonial rule, they
based their critiques of African borders on the idea that they
reected the arbitrariness of colonialism itself.
Criticisms of an arbitrary colonial system
In the introduction to Volume XI of the Gographie universelle,
entitled Afrique septentrionale et occidentale (1937), Bernard wrote
that the partition of the African continent would be considered, in
the future, as one of the most signicant moments in the history of
the world.
40
This division had been accomplished through the
European powers cutting out vast areas of African territory,
without ever taking into account, in these purely articial divides,
either the borders, the geographic conditions or the indigenous
groups.
41
In the second part of Volume XI devoted to West Africa,
he again insisted on the absurdity of the political divisions in the
region, which had been shared like a cake cut into slices.
42
He
wrote that the European powers had been inspired by no other
principle, than the desire for each nation to place its colors on the
map over surfaces that had to be as wide as possible
43
and that the
colonizers were very little concerned with improving the plight of
the indigenous populations.
44
Bernard was, in fact, very much
linked to radical-socialist political circles and was a fervent
supporter of their politique indigne. Though he was also connected
to colonial circles, he kept a critical eye on the way colonizationwas
going, particularly in Algeria. In his mind, the duty of colonial
administrators was to make the transitions of colonial change as
smooth as possible and to manage these so as to also benet
indigenous populations. Since he saw colonization as deeply dis-
rupting native lifestyles, Bernard defended the idea of a form of
colonial rule that was better adjusted to the environment and to the
local population.
45
His critical analysis of colonial boundaries
should be viewed in this perspective.
George Hardy, as the director of the cole coloniale, edited the
collection Manuels coloniaux, in which he self-published a series of
books addressing the issue of borders: Gographie de la France
extrieure, Gographie et colonisation, Vues gnrales de lhistoire de
lAfrique, and especially La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre.
In these last two books, Hardy described the processes underlying
the delimitation of borders in the colonial situation. The divides, he
said, were based on two opposite methods: that of the early
34
E. Colin, Jacques Weulersse (1905e1946), Annales de Gographie, 56e301 (1947) 53.
35
E. Sibeud, Une science impriale pour lAfrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France, 1878e1930, Paris, 2002, 297e298.
36
W.B. Cohen, Empereurs sans sceptre, Paris, 1973, 145.
37
B. Mouralis, A. Piriou, Robert Delavignette, savant et politique (1897e1976), Paris, 2003.
38
Singaravelou, Professer lEmpire (note 4), 186.
39
D. Nordman, Augustin Bernard, in: F. Pouillon (Ed), Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue franaise, Paris, 2008, 94.
40
A. Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI e Afrique septentrionale et occidentale. Deuxime partie Sahara e Afrique occidentalex Paris, 1939, tome 1, 23.
41
Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 1, 23.
42
Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 447.
43
Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 447.
44
Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 446.
45
F. Deprest, Gographes en Algrie. Savoirs universitaires en situation colonial, Paris, 2009, 197e199.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 198
colonizers and that of the diplomats. To facilitate the organization
of the colonized territories, the early colonizers had had to keep the
local populations within clear units. According to the logic of their
conquest, they would have sought to determine the extent of ethnic
areas on the ground, and thus demarcate space accordingly.
46
Natural settings had been respected insofar as they had enabled the
colonizers to use the traditional structures of authority.
47
Opposed
to these early colonizers were the diplomats, drawing lines on maps
in areas that they saw as empty, creating in many places borders
which 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 and
fragile.
48
Rather than basing boundaries on the principles of
human geography and ethnicity, according to Hardy, the diplomatic
logic was purely arbitrary.
A further aspect of the critical discourse on the territorial
congurations created by the colonial situation was reected in
Delavignettes work. In his book Afrique occidentale franaise,
written for the Colonial Exposition of 1931, Delavignette wrote of
the territorial organization of French West Africa:
Such colonies are purely administrative lots. A decree has
created them. A new decree can abolish them. They do not
correspond, in general, to natural zones or single races. (.) It
seems that a Jacobean will has cut and sliced up the country
and its people.
49
Here we nd the essence of what has become a familiar
discourse portraying African borders as lofty administrative divi-
sions. Delavignette even concluded by mentioning the territories
that we have arbitrarily dened.
50
This perspective was also
present in Weulersses work. Criticizing colonial boundaries,
notably in his book LAfrique noire, published in the collection
La gographie pour tous (1934), Weulersse wrote:
Europe has tailored it to her pleasure, following the random
course of her diplomatic niceties. Thus was arranged the
political suit with which the African giant was dressed. But,
what has been so easily stitched can become unsewn in
much the same way. Such clear-cut borders, such precise
contours should fool no-one.
51
The common ground shared by Augustin Bernard, George
Hardy, Robert Delavignette and Jacques Weulersse may reect the
fact that these men belonged to the second or third colonial
generation. The new generations of directors and observers of the
colonies apparently wished to pay more attention to the natives as
political and historical actors in the colonial context. They repre-
sented what Raoul Girardet has called colonial humanism.
52
This
was a movement, by which colonial conscience was called upon at
the instigation of some of its main actors, either scientists, politi-
cians or writers. Delavignette and Weulersse who were of the third
generation, were close to the reformist networks and partisans of
the SFIO (French Section of the second Workers International) of
Lon Blum and Marius Moutet. They supported a new vision, that
of a federal and decentralized Empire, based on a collaboration
between the French and the colonized populations.
53
From this point of view, the borders of Africa were the scars of
the old methods of colonization that were now in the process of
being rejected; they were evidence of a coercive and arbitrary logic
that had been more concerned with imperialism and national
grandeur than with people and improving local environment.
These critical views on African borders were thus connected to the
growing intellectual distance between this interwar generation and
the preceding generation more concerned with the logic of
conquest. Civilians, scholars, teachers and administrators perceived
the partition of Africa as the work of military pioneers bent on
expansion or of diplomats concerned above all with national
prestige. In contrast, the new generation thought themselves
primarily interested in the development and welfare of the local
populations. The old divides within African territory were the
symbols 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 was
difcult for the younger generation to get to grips with past logics.
When observing the map of West Africa, they could no longer
understand what had motivated the apparently absurd divides they
had inherited. For these men, who had eld knowledge of Africa, its
borders appeared to have been arbitrarily drawn in Paris, in the
bureaus and departments very far aeld from the genuine realities.
With the exception of George Hardy, these experts seemed to be
relatively unaware of the extent of the work that had in fact been
conducted in the eld and amongst the populations at the time of
conquest. Nor didtheygenerallysuppose that existingborders mayin
some cases have followed pre-existing African political boundaries.
This may be partly explained by the relatively little publicity given to
eldwork and local negotiations during the preceding era of imperial
expansion. These negotiations were scarcely ever mentioned in the
colonial newspapers, in the articles of scientic journals or in the
Bulletin du comit de lAfrique franaise. These media preferred to
present the issues of delimitation, demarcation and jurisdiction as
a purely European affair. Finally, the new humanist perspective and
focus onthe Africanpeople advocated by the newgenerationhad the
paradoxical effect of erasing the history of Africanpolitical structures
and the role of the local populations in dening colonial boundaries.
Though their perspective was to expose the authoritarian and coer-
civeaspects of prior colonial rule, their visionof Africawas alsodeeply
nourished by colonial prejudice.
Borders and the specicity 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 the
people of West Africawere but anamalgamof peoples andthat it was
difcult to see through such chaos.
54
In Sudan, he said that the races
had disappeared, but that nations had not yet appeared.
55
He also
stressed that there were no natural regions in West Africa, only
46
G. Hardy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre aux xix
e
et xx
e
sicles, Paris, 1937, 410.
47
Hardy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre (note 46), 411.
48
Hardy, La politique coloniale et le partage de la terre (note 46), 412.
49
Delavignette, Afrique occidentale franaise (note 2), 32.
50
Delavignette, Afrique occidentale franaise (note 2), 33.
51
Weulersse, LAfrique noire (note 2), 38.
52
R. Girardet, LIde coloniale en France de 1871 1962, Paris, 1972, 253e273.
53
Singaravelou, Professer lEmpire (note 4), 155.
54
Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 421.
55
Bernard, Gographie Universelle. Tome XI (note 40), tome 2, 442.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 199
indeterminate areas of climate and vegetation.
56
Faced with such
indeterminacy, the early colonizers had vaguely imposed boundaries
but were doomed to fail since the regional organization of local space
could not be clearly established at a time when the populations of the
regionwere at anintermediatestage, totallyoblivious of race or nation.
For Bernard, if arbitrary borders had indeed been drawn during the
earlyyears of colonization, this was as muchdue tothe inferior stage of
civilizationof the indigenous populations as tothe brutal nature of the
transformations introduced by colonization in the area.
Hardy, meanwhile, claimed that the very concept of border was
unknown in Africa before the era of colonization.
57
His opinion was
that Africa offered only a fewill-dened natural areas that had so far
beenbadlystakedout andthat therewere nohistorical regions worth
mentioning.
58
In his mind, the whole continent was but a succession
of climatic zones giving rise to alternately nomadic or sedentary
populations.
59
In such a climatic setting, where natural boundaries
did not exist, political units unchallenged by determined opposition
on the ground had grown up as do mushroom-empires.
60
Hardy
Fig. 4. Map of the administrative division of a natural region (R. Delavignette, Afrique occidentale franaise, Paris, 1931, 29).
56
Bernard, Gographie 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 gnrales de lHistoire dAfrique, Paris, (1923) 1942, xiii.
59
Hardy, Vues gnrales de lHistoire dAfrique (note 58).
60
However, the political units that form around these central regions and are quick to jump over the edge of an oasis or of a clearing [qui ont tt fait de sauter par-dessus
les bords de loasis ou de la clairire]. They rarely nd those natural borders that we have been accustomed to consider as the prerequisites of strength and time; they do not
encounter to stop or protect them, mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees or the Alps or waters such as the Rhine or the Mediterranean; the whole climate zone is open to
them and, provided they outweigh their neighbors in energy, their domination can advance like a rain storm on an immense open eld. These are the mushroom-empires:
Hardy, Vues gnrales de lHistoire dAfrique (note 58), xvi.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 200
believed that it was the determinants of climate and the lack of
natural boundaries that at least partly explained the bizarre insta-
bility of African dominions. In such a troubled setting, human groups
neither hadthe time nor the opportunityto intermingle andhadthus
retained their ethnic individuality.
61
Race thus took precedence over
everything in Africa, whilst in Europe contemporary political units
were built by racially-mixed populations.
62
Due to the absence of
natural and historic areas, of geographic and human boundaries,
European settlement had caused in this perspective a complete
reversal of geographical values.
63
Thedenitionof borders bycolonial
powers, according to Hardy, generated in Africa a hitherto unknown
feeling: that of a link between consciousness of race and occupation
of land. This discourse, profoundly marked by geographical and
climatic determinismand essentialism, envisaged a continent where
nature was indeterminate, political units unstable and human orga-
nization still racial. According to Hardy, a territorial organization
along ethnic lines would be the only solution.
Delavignette, for his part, denounced an arbitrary colonial orga-
nization which corresponded neither to the boundaries of human
groups nor to natural areas.
64
It was, however, in the name of an
ideal of ethnic homogeneity that he criticized the congurations
created by colonization. In his opinion, African borders should have
been dened by homogenous races or geographic regions. He thus
presented a map showing how internal administrative boundaries
had divided what he saw as a natural region.
65
He continued his
analysis by noting that the entities created by colonization were
similar in nature to the dpartements of metropolitan France. But
whereas in France, the dpartement is for the peasant a source of
pride and a daily reference, for the naturals of Africa (as he called
them), it meant nothing because it was an imported concept.
66
In
the same way, for Delavignette, true Frenchmen could only originate
from small villages, and true Africans belonged to tribes.
67
Beyond the eld of the colonial sciences, the idea of the speci-
city of African borders appeared in the work of other geographers
who 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 Gographie des frontires based on the
relationships between geography and ethnicity and on the recip-
rocal interactions between environments and societies.
68
He
devoted several pages to the limits of primitive societies, for whom
the modern concept of border was unknown. This was, he wrote,
the case with nomadic and forest societies and inparticular those to
be found in Africa.
69
Basically, his argument was that genres de vie
depended on modes of material production: because the societies
in such regions lacked the means of producing clearly-dened
territories within their environment, they could not organize
themselves into nation-states. This viewwas rooted in the theory of
the primacy of environmental determinants, and in Vidalian theory.
Finally, it was the xed and permanent aspects of the relationships
between man and his environment that were advanced by Ancel to
describe territorial relations in Africa.
More generally, critiques of colonial boundaries appeared to
reect the common assumptions of the day: a generalized climatic
determinism, the idea of the otherness of Africa, and nally the
notion that the essence of Africans is to be found in their ethnicity.
The argument that colonial boundaries were inadequate to deal
with variations in the natural environment or in human organiza-
tion sprung ultimately from these preconceptions. The interwar
period thus seems to be the period of a paradigmatic shift. The rst
generation of soldiers and administrators had been pragmatically
looking for historicalepolitical forms of organization on which to
base their rule. In contrast, the later generation of authors inspired
by the idea that ethnic groups are clearly identiable and circum-
scribed within territories. After the First World War, ethnological
and anthropological work showed a renewed interest in the
systematic classication of people. These studies were accompa-
nied by a growth in the production of monographs describing the
characteristics of a given population from an essentialist point of
view.
70
The idea that spatial divisions within Africa could have been
established without taking into account its ethnic organization
seemed absurd to the new generation. Indeed, the development of
ethnographic mapping clearly highlighted the obvious mismatch
between colonial boundaries and ethnic groups.
71
However, the
essentialisation of Africa on the basis of distinct ethnic groups
evacuated all local political realities and erased all historical
perspective in favor of a logic that presented human organizations
in Africa as based on fundamentally immutable family structures.
Conclusion
The interwar period was a methodological turning point in the
study of African boundaries. The logics that guided the meaning
and discourse on borders in general changed, and a new set of
assumptions and practical knowledge created a fresh paradigmfor
the drawing up of borders. After the First World War, dening an
area was a matter of exposing its character and its underlying
human unity. The formalization of territories and borders was
dominated by ethno-linguistic criteria that became the analytical
framework for dividing space. This was the moment of triumph for
the idea that the political boundaries of a state were best arranged
when they coincided with those of a nation characterized by
ethnic and linguistic homogeneity. The discourse concerning
African borders was thus based on the same premises as those
that had been used in Europe, where the aim was also to devise
boundaries corresponding to ethnicity and language. But whereas
61
Hardy, Vues gnrales de lHistoire dAfrique (note 58), xvi.
62
Hardy, Vues gnrales de lHistoire dAfrique (note 58), xviiI.
63
Hardy, Vues gnrales de lHistoire dAfrique (note 58), xix.
64
Delavignette, Afrique occidentale franaise (note 2), 31.
65
Delavignette, Afrique occidentale franaise (note 2), 29 (Fig. 4).
66
Delavignette, Afrique occidentale franaise (note 2), 32.
67
V. Dimier, Le Commandant de Cercle: un expert en administration coloniale, un spcialiste de lindigne? Revue dHistoire des Sciences Humaines 10 (2004) 42.
68
P.Y. Pechoux and M. Sivignon, Jacques Ancel (1882e1943) gographe entre-deux-guerres (1919e1945), in: Claval, Sanguin (Ed), La gographie lpoque classique
(note 15), 217.
69
Human groups nd themselves isolated within an immense natural environment. They rarely meet and thus have no use for border lines. This is the case with many
primitive societies, for whom the forest, the mountain range, the sea represent unfathomable borders. It is instructive to study these molecular groups, limited to a corner of
the globe, who never try to meet one another. The rudimentary mechanisms of these formless and boundless states can be seized and so to can be understood, the way
a border was born when two such groups nally met. The border was more like the fence of a landowner than a divide between two states, or a limit in competency, as
todays jurists would have it: J. Ancel, Gographie des frontires, Paris, 1938, 8.
70
M.A. Suremain, LAfrique en revues: le discours africaniste franais, des sciences coloniales aux sciences sociales (anthropologie, ethnologie, gographie humaine, sociologie),
1919e1946, Doctoral thesis, University Paris VII, 2001, 342e345.
71
M.A. Suremain, Cartographie coloniale et encadrement des populations en Afrique, Revue franaise dhistoire doutre-mer 324e325 (1999) 37e47.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 201
in Europe the failure to reach this ideal was explained by the
problem of minorities, Africa on the other hand was redened by
its otherness, reecting the primacy of climatic and ethnic
determinism. The idea of the peoples right to self government
which in Europe went hand in hand with the principle of
nationalities was conspicuously absent from the discourses on the
articiality of African borders.
The critique of colonial boundaries in Africa resulted from the
realization that the ideal congruence of ethnicity, language and
territory had been violated by the effects of colonial partition. This
was the discourse of a new generation of scholars, who wished to
distance themselves from the earlier idealization of the act of
conquest and truly believed in the need for a humanist reform of
the colonial system. Although their arguments aimed, among other
things, to criticize the authoritarian and coercive aspects of colo-
nization, their discourse also helped build the image of an Africa as
absolutely alien and unique. This was because their criticisms
concerning the partition of Africa did not critique colonization
itself, but rather its past methods. Furthermore, by marking African
territorial organization with the stamp of colonial articiality, the
new generation denied Africa of a history which could, with time,
have served a national or political discourse. Finally, by treating the
colonial territories as purely the products of European conquest
undertaken 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 political
destiny.
The inuence and aura of those who theorized African colo-
nial borders in the 1930s played a prominent role in the
dissemination of the idea of their articiality. Delavignette and
Hardy, as directors of the cole Coloniale, participated in the
training of the last generations of administrators. Jacques Weu-
lersse also taught geography in the cole nationale de la France
dOutre Mer, the cole nationale des langues orientales vivantes,
the institut dethnologie and the cole libre des sciences politiques.
The idea of articiality, developed and articulated by such
inuential voices, reinforced the image of a downtrodden Africa,
irrationally partitioned by all-powerful European colonizers. It
also conrmed the balance of power existing under colonial rule
and became paradoxically, in the 1950s, the template of anti-
colonial discourse. It still haunts much of todays thinking about
Africa.
C. Lefebvre / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 191e202 202