DEASC - Diplôme d'Etablissement sur l'Afrique Subsaharienne Contemporaine

This module explores the shifting relationship between Europe and Africa from the early modern period to the present day. It traces the evolution from exploitation — via slavery, colonialism, and resource extraction — to contemporary efforts toward more “enlightened” political, economic, and cultural engagement. It explores how Europe’s self-image as a “normative power” and promoter of development has evolved alongside enduring patterns of dependency, asymmetry, and control. Students will engage with historical evidence, theoretical frameworks, and policy documents to interrogate the legacies of empire, the dynamics of decolonization, and the contested visions of partnership in the 21st century.

Provisional schedule

Lecture 1: Introduction — Framing Europe–Africa Relations through the Slave Trade
This lecture outlines the aims and learning objectives of the course. It identifies foundational moments, debates and case studies around which this module is structured. It clarifies key terms — Europe, Africa, exploitative, enlightened — and interrogates their contested meanings. It asks how far Europe’s earliest sustained engagements with Africa, above all the Atlantic slave trade, established the structural patterns that would define later European involvement in Africa. Finally, the lecture assesses what forces — intellectual, economic, political, or moral — eventually challenged and delegitimised the slave trade and whether this “closure” merely marked a reconfiguration of exploitation.

Lecture 2: Europe’s Colonisation of Africa
This lecture examines the defining features of early colonial enterprises led by individuals and companies — including the concession system, chartered companies such as the British East India Company, and King Leopold II’s personal rule in the Congo — and asks whether these predatory ventures were anomalies or emblematic of broader European attitudes toward Africa. It explores whether the later involvement of European states reduced, regularised or intensified earlier abuses. It also analyses the geopolitical, economic and ideological drivers behind the Scramble for Africa and investigates why African resistance was largely dismissed or suppressed by European powers.

Lecture 3: European Colonial Rule — Systems, Ideologies and Practices
This lecture begins by comparing the doctrines and administrative systems employed by different European colonial powers — including indirect rule, assimilation, and association — and interrogates whether these systems were inherently exploitative or whether they contained elements that were – for contemporaries at least – developmental and “civilising.” It then evaluates the ideological frameworks used by European states to justify domination (“white man’s burden,” mission civilisatrice). Finally, it explores when and how these ideological claims began to unravel.

Lecture 4: Decolonisation — Disengagement or Reconfigured Influence?
This lecture analyses the varied European approaches to decolonisation — negotiated withdrawal, violent counter-insurgency, phased reforms, and abrupt exit — and evaluates how far these approaches were consistent with earlier colonial doctrines. Did European withdrawal strategies point to a belated “enlightened” rethinking of empire, or were they driven by shifting geopolitical realities, colonial overstretch, and new forms of politico-economic influence that made formal empire unnecessary? Did decolonisation represent the end of European exploitation or the beginning of a new, subtler mode of asymmetrical engagement?

Lecture 5: Post-Colonial Relations — Towards a New Partnership?
This lecture interrogates the concept of Europeanisation and examines how institutional developments — from the creation of the Common Market to the evolution of the European Union and Africa’s own transition from the OAU to the AU — reconfigured Europe–Africa relations. A key theme is whether these institutional shifts marked a substantive break with colonial patterns or merely repackaged older hierarchies. How credible is the EU’s discourse of “partnership,” and to what extent does normative power Europe represent an enlightened, values-driven engagement rather than a strategic attempt to reassert influence through softer, ostensibly moral instruments? Students consider how easily normative claims can be disentangled from Europe’s colonial legacies and African perceptions of them.

Lecture 6: A Common European Development Policy?
This lecture traces the emergence of a common European development policy from the early postcolonial decades through the Association Agreements, the Yaoundé and Lomé Conventions, the Cotonou Agreement and the more recent Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Students analyse whether these frameworks embody a new, principled, and mutually beneficial model of development partnership or whether they simply reproduce the structural imbalances and dependency dynamics characteristic of the colonial era.

Lecture 7: France and Africa — A Catalyst Behind Europe’s Africa Policy?
France’s longstanding and often fraught relationship with Africa serves as a case study in the ambiguity of postcolonial engagement. The concept of Françafrique captures a web of personalised, opaque, and frequently exploitative political and economic ties. Yet France has also been central to building a collective European development policy, shaping the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, and promoting a more coordinated European foreign policy towards Africa. This lecture asks how France and the EU have influenced one another’s Africa strategies, and whether the EU has diluted French neocolonial tendencies or institutionalised them in subtler forms.

Lecture 8: Britain and Africa — Undermining or Complementing EU Africa Policy?
This lecture focuses mainly on the UK’s post-colonial relations with Africa, moving from its narrow realist approach in the 1980s and 1990s towards its post-1990s ambition to pursue an “ethical foreign policy.” The UK’s self-presentation as an enlightened actor and aid superpower expanding development assistance and shaping global poverty reduction agendas, was complicated by Brexit, the merger of DFID into the Foreign Office, and domestic fiscal pressures. Students analyse how the UK’s partial withdrawal from EU structures has reshaped the broader European approach to Africa, and whether its shifting priorities have weakened, challenged, or, in certain areas, inadvertently reinforced EU strategies.

Lecture 9: The Role of Non-European Powers & Course Conclusions
This lecture explores how rising and established non-European powers have (re)shaped both the substance and the perception of Europe’s Africa policies. The United States — particularly under the two Trump administrations — raised questions about Western consistency, sometimes casting the EU as a more stable and “normative” actor by comparison. China’s expanding presence, meanwhile, offers African states alternative models of engagement that contrast sharply with the EU’s rules-based, market-oriented, and often conditional approach. The lecture concludes by synthesising course themes: Has the EU’s trajectory been one of gradual movement from exploitation to enlightenment, or has exploitation merely adapted to new institutional contexts and discursive frameworks? Which “Europe” and which “Africa” are we talking about, given the profound internal diversity on both sides? Finally and crucially, what space has there been — historically and today — for an autonomous African voice to shape the terms of engagement rather than simply respond to them?

Lecture 10: Examination