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Race & Decolonisation 04: Decolonisation and Identity across Europe and Africa
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Entangled Histories: Decolonisation and Identity across Europe and Southern Africa This panel delves into the intricate dynamics of decolonisation in the intertwined histories of Europe and Southern Africa, situating these processes within the broader context of the Cold War between the 1960s and the 1990s. Decolonisation redrew political boundaries, redefined national identities, and restructured global power hierarchies. In this framework, the white fortress comprised of South Africa and the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique was a battleground for competing global ideologies, adding further complexity to post-colonial transitions. Firstly, this identity clash also influenced the concept of Blackness as both a cultural identity and a political category. Blackness has served as a powerful force for resistance, solidarity, and the critique of systemic inequities, particularly within transnational anti-colonial and anti-racist movements. Secondly, it investigates internal contradictions between European Community institutions, and it also considers the anti-racist and anti-capitalist criticisms of the European socialist parties against the EEC’s actions. Finally, it intends to comprehend how the Last Empire rethought the relations with people from the former African colonies in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution. The rhetoric of equality and democracy associated with belated anticolonialism sharply contrasted with minorities’ marginalisation and the reframing of former colonial subjects as “migrants,” failing to reconcile their professed ideals with the realities of systemic racial and ethnic exclusion. By exploring the entangled histories of Europe and Southern Africa, this panel enriches debates on race, decolonisation, and identity, offering a critical lens on the challenges of building inclusive and equitable societies in the shadow of empires. Presentations of the Symposium Portuguese Decolonisation and the Third Enlargement: Insights from the European Parliament This paper investigates the weight of colonial issues in shaping relations between the European Community (EC) and Portugal from the viewpoint of the European Parliamentary Assembly (EPA)/European Parliament. The research period spans Lisbon's 1962 request for association with the European Community to its 1986 accession. Existing studies on the EPA's role in the relationship between European integration and decolonisation primarily focus on the "particular ties" maintained by funding EC member states with Sub-Saharan Africa, with little attention given to Portugal's colonial empire. Through archival sources, this research explores parties and group dynamics in the plenary and within the internal commission encharged, covering critical moments in EC–Lisbon relations, including the signature of the 1972 Trade Agreement. By comparing debates, resolutions and interrogations, the analysis investigates whether colonial issues were considered as significant as the dictatorial nature of the Portuguese regime. Despite its limited powers, the EPA/EP has been the most active institution in condemning the Portuguese colonial wars. Moreover, it repeatedly denounced the Council's inconsistent stance and the incoherent policies of EC member states in Lusophone Africa, as discussions around the Cabora Bassa project highlight. However, declarations on equality were often accompanied by references to the European civilising mission. Additionally, as founding Member States did with their former colonies, the third enlargement did not come with a thorough discussion on a shared colonial past. This outcome was favoured by the overlap between democratic transition and decolonisation, contributing to widespread confusion over how to address racial segregation in southern Africa. Solidarity and Struggle: The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania’s Complex Engagement with Europe Scholarship on the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) has often overlooked the organisation’s international dimensions despite their crucial role in shaping its development. This paper explores the PAC’s complex engagement with European governments and anti-apartheid organisations, focusing on how it leveraged international alliances to extend its influence beyond South Africa. These connections influenced the internal dynamics of the anti-apartheid struggle and global discourses on Black identity and solidarity. Focusing on the period from 1961, when the PAC was banned, to 1990, when negotiations to end apartheid began, this study draws on primary sources such as Azania News, Azania Combat, PAC correspondence, and documents from the Anti-Apartheid Movement Collection at the Bodleian Library and the PAC Collection at the NAEHCS Archive in Fort Hare. The research highlights how the establishment of European offices and support networks expanded the PAC’s operational capacity by providing logistical and financial resources and amplifying its message on international platforms. This expansion was not without contradictions. Despite its commitment to Black nationalist ideology, the PAC collaborated with white activists and organisations to bolster its efforts. The PAC’s radical vision also frequently clashed with European political realities and colonial legacies. Additionally, European states’ economic and diplomatic ties to apartheid South Africa complicated these alliances. By analysing the PAC’s navigation of these tensions, this paper underscores the complexities of transnational resistance and illuminates the entangled histories of African liberation movements and European political landscapes. Rethinking Portugal’s Identity during the Democratic Transition (1974-1976): a Historical Overview Despite a body of scholarship on the Iberian empires, Portugal has traditionally been overlooked compared to the British and French empires. Nevertheless, the simultaneity between the fall of the empire and the advent of democracy in Portugal is a unique case in Europe. After the Carnation Revolution (April 25, 1974), Portugal left the African colonies and entered the European Economic Community in 1986. During the democratic transition, Portugal rethought the discourses on national identity, distancing itself from the African empire and colonialism. In 1974, Law 7/74 recognised the right to independence for African peoples. In 1976, the new political elite approved the constitution, a crucial document often considered a state’s 'identity card'. Looking at the debates within the Constituent Assembly, other archival sources, and political choices related to the transition phase (1974-1976), this research aims to analyse how Portugal conceived itself as a post-colonial nation after decolonisation. Under Salazarism, the African empire was a crucial aspect of national identity. The imperial rhetoric supported a vision of Portugal as a multi-ethnic nation, according to the luso-tropical myth. In the aftermath of the revolution, decree-law n°308-A/75 granted Portuguese citizenship to the descendants of Portuguese citizens up to the third generation, prioritising the principle of ius sanguinis. This measure implicitly established a barrier between Africa and Europe, excluding from citizenship most people of African descent. Therefore, considering the early stage of democratic transition is a particularly pertinent viewpoint when addressing colonial ties in Portugal. EU-Africa Relations and the Coloniality of Money: Analysing funding and financing 1European University Institute; 2University of Amsterdam The status of coloniality in EU-Africa relations is curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, scholars and even some practitioners increasingly agree on the persistent vestiges of colonial logics in this contentious intercontinental relationship. On the other hand, diplomats and practitioners persistently commit to the idea of an ‘equal partnership’ in a world full of shared challenges. Coloniality survived colonisation: While the more crass and visible forms of Western colonialism in Africa may have become marginalised, this paper focuses on one of the more elusive persevering dynamics of coloniality, with a focus on direct funding and financial market-based financing in the EU-Africa relationship. This paper theorises the coloniality of money in EU-Africa relations. We focus on how colonial legacies shape power dynamics, decision-making processes, and institutional practices, employing a decolonial lens centred on the ‘coloniality of power’. We scrutinise how EU institutions operate on and reproduce Eurocentric logics of political action, despite a seasonable EU rhetoric simultaneously advocating for equity and geopolitical pragmatism. We demonstrate how a culture of European superiority dominates the EU-Africa relationship, how knowledge production in the partnership favours Eurocentric outcomes, and how hierarchies are in-built into the governance of funding instruments. In so doing, we illustrate how Eurocentric political practices legitimise EU policy and perpetuate racial and economic hierarchies through money-based partnerships. We identify two effects of the coloniality of money: continuity in disguise of reform and marginalised African agency. The paper innovatively combines critical theory on decolonization with an empirically informed analysis of three aspects of EU-Africa relations: institutions and institutional constellations, rules and standards, as well as diplomatic and bureaucratic practices. Our three case studies include the (1) European Investment Bank (EIB), (2) the European Development Fund (EDF) and its successor instrument Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI), and (3) the European Peace Facility’s (EPF) Assistance Measures. By combining detailed empirical case studies with a close re-reading of debates on coloniality and decolonization, we argue that understanding the interplay of money, power, and coloniality is vital. It not only underscores the historicity of EU-Africa relations but also reveals the pernicious obstacles to improved intercontinental cooperation today. We suggest that genuine decolonization requires more than superficial changes: a fundamental shift in the power dynamics of money-based partnerships such as the EU-Africa relationship, and caution against the unintended effects of shallow decolonization in EU-Africa relations. Decolonising Europeanisation: Central Europe’s Ambiguous and Amnesiac Policies towards Africa Institute of International Relations Prague, Czechia Europeanisation is one of the key concepts in European Studies. Yet, it has been quite uncritically applied with the assumption that Western European policies are the golden standard towards which other states should move, especially from an enlargement perspective. This paper contributes to the efforts to decolonise the European Union’s (EU) external policy by operationalising the concept of Europeanisation from a post-colonial perspective and by applying it to the foreign policies of Central European states towards Africa as a case study. The paper starts by elaborating a general framework for a critical evaluation of Europeanisation processes from a decolonial perspective by combining the modified three elements of the EU’s ‘mixed strategy’ to deal with its colonial past (amnesia, atonement and avoidance) with the mainstream understanding of Europeanization as a three-directional model of mutual influences (download, upload, crossload). This novel framework is applied to Central Europe’s foreign policies towards Africa. The post-communist governments now tend to self-identify as a part of the West, yet without sharing the guilt of the former colonial powers and its consequences. Despite their different histories, however, both share amnesia and redirecting as the dominant modes of dealing with their (anti-)colonial pasts: Central Europe has mainly discarded its involvement in the anti-colonial struggle of Africa, and at the same time, it uploads its imagined colonial innocence to the EU level by defending the ‘Fortress Europe’. The deliberation of the ‘unity in diversity’ of the EU’s (anti‑)colonial past and a recognition of its inherent ambiguity is a necessary condition for the EU to reconstruct and implement a common foreign policy that aspires to establish a ‘partnership of equals’ with the global South and Africa particularly. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to Critical European Studies and (Critical) Post-Colonial Studies by directly linking decolonial approaches to the power relations of the EU not only with the global South but also within the EU. | |