This Tuesday (11 November 2014), Dr. Anna Konieczna (Sciences Po) will present a paper at the Centre for European and International Studies Research Seminar (5.00-6.30pm, Dennis Sciama Building DS 2.14). Anna graduated from Warsaw University and obtained her PhD from Sciences Po Paris (2013), where she is currently teaching international relations and history. Her research focuses on French foreign policy in Africa after 1960. In this post, Anna gives us a preview of the paper she will present in Portsmouth this week.

Despite constant historiographical progress, historical research works on French foreign policy in Africa in the post-colonial period focus almost exclusively on French interactions with the former Empire, and neglect the spaces in other parts of Africa. This presentation, which is based on my doctoral thesis, aims to partly fill this gap by presenting a history of relations between France and the South African apartheid regime, during the presidencies in France of Charles de Gaulle (1958-1969) and Georges Pompidou (1969-1974). Drawing on various French and South African archival sources, this presentation will show the motivations and the evolution of the unexpected rapprochement between what was, until then, two distant States. This convergence of interests was fostered by two interlocking elements: the policy of independence followed by both governments and the political evolution of the African continent in the aftermath of the decolonisation. It resulted in close co-operation in the military and strategic fields. This presentation will also place the story back in the broader context of French African policy, both within and beyond the former French Empire, to show the complexity and limits of the French involvement in this internationally disapproved minority regime.

Tea, coffee and cake will be served from 5pm in Dennis Sciama Building DS 2.14, with Anna’s paper beginning at about 5.15pm. All are welcome to attend. 

 

Connected Histories of Decolonisation

 A two-day workshop organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in conjunction with the Centre for European and International Studies Research at the University of Portsmouth and King’s College London

The Senate Room, Senate House (First Floor)

Register for this event online at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies website.

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Thursday 13^th November 2014

 

11-11.30: Coffee and welcome

 

11.30-13.00: Panel 1 – Creating spaces, connections and networks of resistance

Chair: Natalya Vince (University of Portsmouth)

Clemens Hoffmann (Bilkent University) – Anti-colonial empires and the creation of Afroasian spaces of resistance

James Renton (Edge Hill) – The Theatre of the anti-colonial nation: colonial Asia in the age of nationality

Uma Kothari (University of Manchester) – Contesting colonial rule: transnational networks of resistance and the politics of exile

 

13.00-14.00: Lunch

 

14.00-15.30: Panel 2 – Competing narratives of decolonisation

Chair: Philip Murphy (ICWS)

Andrew Kuech (The New School of Social Research, New York) – Duelling Chinese nationalism: a postcolonial confrontation with American power

Tim Livsey (King’s College London) – Connected histories of decolonisation and development: the United States, Britain and African universities

Robert S. G. Fletcher (University of Exeter) – Decolonisation and the arid world

 

15.30-16.00: Tea

 

16.00-17:00: Panel 3 – Connected histories of nationalism

Chair: Ed Naylor (University of Portsmouth)

Thomas Sharp (Oxford Brookes) – A transnational nationalism: the UPC and the decolonisation of Cameroon, 1948-1961

Camille Evrard (University of Paris I) – Morocco, France and the UN in the Mauritanian decolonization process

17.00-17.15: Short break

17.15-18.45: Panel 4 – Networks, models and interconnections

Chair: Keith Somerville (ICWS)

Bruno C. Reis (ICS-UL) – The trauma of Belgium decolonization in Portugal: real impact or legitimizing discourse?

Joanna Warson (University of Portsmouth) – A French vision of Africa: Franco-African relations beyond colonialism and Francophone Africa

Marta Musso (University of Cambridge) – Decolonisation and oil politics: economic interdependence and struggle for self-determination

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Friday 14^th November 2014

9-9.30: Coffee

9.30-11.00: Panel 5 – Diplomacy, development and domestic influences on British decolonisation and its aftermath

Chair: Joanna Warson (University of Portsmouth)

Andrew W M Smith (UCL/ Chichester) – ‘Information about empire’: British overseas representation and Francophone Africa

Charlotte Riley (University of York) – ‘Overseas aid is no longer a form of charity’: Britain, decolonisation and the UN decade of development

Rosalind Coffey (LSE) – British press coverage of the Sharpeville massacre

11.00-11.30: Coffee

 

11.30-12.30: Panel 6 – France in South Africa

Chair: Sarah Stockwell (King’s College London)

Anna Konieczna (Sciences Po, Paris) – The dialogue with Pretoria or a dialogue at cross purposes

Roel van der Velde (University of Portsmouth) – Marketing helicopters to Pretoria: reconstructing parallel French and South African military and industrial development, 1955-1977

12.30-13.30: Lunch

 

13.30-15.00: Panel 7 – Forced labour

Chair: Tony Chafer (University of Portsmouth)

Romain Tiquet (Humboldt University at Berlin/ForcedLabourAfrica) – Accident at work or “self-inflicted” wounds in Senegalese penal camps? Administrative archive and colonial order

Víctor Fernández Soriano (University of Thessaly, Greece/ForcedLabourAfrica) – The Belgian enigma: reform and stagnation in the Province of Equateur, Belgian Congo (1945-1960)

Alexander Keese (Humboldt University at Berlin/ForcedLabourAfrica) – Business as usual: repressive practices, the “vagabond problem”,

and labour policies in the Middle Congo (1945-1968)

15.00-15.30: Tea

 

15.30-16.30: Panel 8 – Human rights, anti-imperialist nationalism, decolonisation: mapping the global impact of the August 1941 Atlantic Charter

Chair: Margaret Majumdar (University of Portsmouth)

Martin Evans (University of Sussex) – From the general to the specific: the regional impact of the Atlantic Charter in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia

Clive Webb (University of Sussex) – African Americans, the Atlantic Charter and the global Civil Rights movement

 

16.30-17.00: Concluding round table discussion

With remarks from Philip Murphy (ICWS)

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 To register for this event, please visit the Institute of Commonwealth Studies website.