“African Opinions” at the Brazzaville Conference: Evolué Politics, Representation, and the Future of French Colonialism in Africa

Abstract

This article focuses on the essays that évolués wrote and Félix Eboué presented to participants at the Brazzaville Conference in 1944 and specifically analyzes how this group of elite Africans understood and participated in debates on citizenship, empire, and rights and how they articulated their arguments about the future of French colonialism to the most important decision-makers in the francophone world. For these évolué writers, the continuation of French colonialism was a necessity with no immediate end in sight. Their arguments, which ranged from expanded citizenship rights for elites to the dangers of assimilation, captured the fraught social, political, economic, and intellectual landscapes of wartime French colonial Africa. As a result, their letters tell us a great deal about both not only their beliefs and desires for the future but also the nature of reform that Félix Eboué felt comfortable sharing at the Brazzaville Conference with other colonial administrators and stakeholders in 1944.