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Pan-Africanism in Paris, 1924–1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

J. Ayo Langley
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Extract

‘THE story, the spirit of Pan-Africanism, although originating in America and France, was brought to our country by a man whose name and memory I should like to recall here. I am speaking of Marc Kodio Tovallo Queno, who—as an authentic African forerunner of the movement—claimed his negritude even before the word was coined. He brought us to know Marcus Garvey, Dr Du Bois, and so many others; when I was a child I heard my parents speak of these names and evoke these problems. That is to say, if the first sketch of this movement was begun in America and Paris, it had, before it was publicly evident, repercussions and an extension in Africa.’1

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Article
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The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 1969 , pp. 69 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

Page 69 note 1 Zinsou, Emile, in Pan-Africanism Reconsidered (Berkeley, 1962), p. 74.Google Scholar

Page 69 note 2 Even the two standard works on the subject suffer from this defect— Decraene, P., Le Panafricanisme (Paris 1959),Google Scholar and Legum, Colin, Pan-Africanism: a short political guide (New York, 1965).Google ScholarPadmore, G., Pan-Africanism or Communism? (London, 1956),Google Scholar devotes only a few lines to it, while Du Bois is completely silent on the subject. As far as the author is aware, only Professor George Shepperson, the leading authority on the historical study of pan-Africanism, has drawn attention to the possibility of studying French pan-Negro groups as part of the pan- African movement of the 1920s and 1930s—see Shepperson, G.. ‘Pan-Africanism and “Pan-Africanism”: some historical notes’, in Phylon (Atlanta), xxiii, 1962, pp. 355–6.Google Scholar Professor Shepperson, however, merely confines his attention to the roles of Blaise Diagne and Gratien Candace in the period 1919—1921, and states: ‘If French-speaking African participation in the pan-African movement seems to have been negligible from 1921 until after the 1945 Manchester Congress, the emergence of negritude in the 1930s indicated that they were making a distinct contribution to cultural pan-Africanism’.

Page 70 note 1 James Spiegler of Nuffield College, Oxford, has recently completed a doctoral dissertation on French African political organisations in Paris in the inter-war period. My concentration on the Ligue and its successors by no means implies that other Negro groups were unimportant.

Page 70 note 2 See Hymans, Jacques Louis, ‘French Influences on Leopold Senghor's Theory of Negritude: 1928–48’, in Race (London), VII, 1965–1966, pp. 365–70;Google Scholar and Kesteloot, Lilyan, Ecrivains noirs de languefrancaise: naissance d'une litlérature (Brussels, 2nd edn. 1965).Google Scholar

Page 71 note 1 For a general background to the interaction of French and Senegalese politics (the ‘metropolitan axis of reference’) in the period before 1940, see the informative article by Johnson, G. Wesley, ‘The Ascendancy of Blaise Diagne and the Beginning of African Politics in Senegal’, in Africa (London), xxxvi, 3, 07 1966;Google Scholar Dr Johnson also has a book forthcoming on Senegalese politics to 1940. See also Hodgkin, Thomas, ‘Background to A.O.F.: 2—The Metropolitan Axis’, and ‘Background to A.O.F.: 3—African Reactions to French Rule’, in West Africa (London), 9 and 16 01 1954, pp. 5–6 and 31–2.Google Scholar Fuller documentation on these and other matters is provided in my doctoral thesis, ‘West African Aspects of the Pan-African Movements: 1900–1945’ (University of Edinburgh, 1968).

Page 71 note 2 Johnson, G. Wesley, ‘Blaise Diagne: master politician of Senegal,’ in Tarikh (London), 1, 2, 1966.Google Scholar

Page 71 note 3 G. Wesley Johnson, ‘The Ascendancy of Blaise Diagne’, op. cit. p. 252.

Page 71 note 4 Guéye, Lamine, Itinéraire africain (Paris, 1966), p. 52.Google Scholar

Page 71 note 5 See, for example, Ottley, Roi, No Green Pastures (London, 1952), pp. 107–8Google Scholar (Ottley wrongly spells his name ‘Kogo’).

Page 71 note 6 The information on the history of the Houénou family was gleaned from the inscriptions in the family vault of the Houénous at Ouidah, with the assistance of M Felix François Quenum and M Etienne F. Quenum of Ouidah, and an interview in October 1966 with Mme Rose Elisha (née T. Quenum) of Cotonou, Houénou's sister.

Page 72 note 1 Ottley, op. cit. p. 107.

Page 72 note 2 See Gautherot, Gustave, ‘Le Bolchevisme en Afrique’, in Bulletin du Comité de l' Afrique française (Paris), 1930, p. 423.Google Scholar

Page 72 note 3 Ottley, op. cit. pp. 107–9.

Page 72 note 4 Houénou, K. Tovalou, L'Involution des métamorphoses et des métempsychoses de l'univers (Paris, 1921), p. 5.Google Scholar These extracts are translated, as are all lengthy quotations from the original French in the pages which follow.

Page 72 note 5 Ibid. p. 6.

Page 73 note 1 Ibid p. 77 and 71–2.

Page 73 note 2 Ballard, John, ‘The Porto Novo Incidents of 1923: politics in the colonial era’, in Odu (Ibadan), II, I, 1966.Google Scholar This was not the first time that French Negroes had taken interest in Negro American race leaders and movements; some of them, resident in Paris, had had contacts with Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee. See Harlan, L., ‘Booker T. Washington and the White Man's Burden’, in The American Historical Review (New York), LXXI, 2, 1966;Google Scholar extracts from The Negro World (New York) were also published in French, and Tovalou is described in The Negro World of 17 08 1929Google Scholar as ‘U.N.I.A. Representative in France’.

Page 73 note 3 Both Ho's Le Paria and his violent pamphlet Le Prods de la colonisation française condemned French rule in general, including colonial abuses in Dahomey, Madagascar, and the French West Indies. Ho Chi Minh is also said to have written articles for La Race noire (Paris) during his stay in Russia in 1924.Google Scholar See Lacouture, Jean, Ho Chi Mirth (Paris, 1967), pp. 22 and 29–36.Google Scholar

Page 74 note 1 Départ Confidentiel, 3 January 1921 to 20 April 1925; 182 C, 29 June 1923, l'administrateur commandant cercie de Cotonou. Archioes nationales du Dahomey, Porto Novo.

Page 74 note 2 See Ballard, John, ‘The Porto Novo Incidents of 1923; politics in the colonial era,’ in Odu, II, I, 1966;Google ScholarGarigue, P., ‘An Anthropological Interpretation of the Changing Political Leadership in West Africa’ (University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1954), pp. 343–5.Google ScholarLe Journal (Paris) stated in March 1923 that the cause of the disturbances was the intrigues between rival chiefs; but Kojo Tovalou Houénou, no doubt closely following developments in Porto Novo from Paris, told a reporter of this newspaper that, on the contrary, all the disturbances had been caused by increases in taxation; ibid.Buell, R. L., The Native Problem in Africa (New York, 1928), vol. I, p. 1019 and vol. II, p. 16,Google Scholar adds recruitment into the French army, and resentment against the discrimination in status between citizens and subjects, to the causes of the incidents of 1923. It must be remembered, however, that bad economic conditions in the 1920s and the virtual stopping of the palm-oil trade must have greatly contributed to the political unrest—see Garigue, op. cit. pp. 344–5, 349, and 366; also ‘Quelques revendications dahoméens’, in Les Continents (Paris), I 09 1924.Google Scholar

Page 74 note 3 Départ confidentiel, 3 January 1921 to uo April 1925; 141C and 142C, 4 April 1924, M l'administrateur en chef, commandant cercle Allada. Archives nationales du Dahomey.

Page 74 note 4 Speech of 20 February 1924 at L'Ecole interalliée des hautes Etudes sociales.

Page 75 note 1 Gautherot, Gustav, Le Bolehevisme aux colonies et l'impérialisme rouge (Paris, 1930), p. 272;Google Scholar and ‘Le Boichevisme en Afrique,’ Bulletin du comité de l'Afrique française, 1930, p. 423.Google Scholar It is unlikely that Houénou had any direct liaison with the Comintern, although his anti-colonial agitation was supported by the French party; he was, however, a supporter of Marcus Garvey and visited the United States in 1924 as guest of the U.N.I.A.; his sister, Mme Rose Elisha, informed the writer that Houénou was a ‘friend of Marcus Garvey’ and that Garvey's activities were well-known in Cotonou and Porto Novo in the 1920s.

Page 75 note 2 For the influence and significance of Maran's Batouala, see Lilyan Kesteloot, op. cit. pp. 83–7, and Hommage à René Maran (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar, especially Léopold Senghor's tribute, ‘René Maran, précurseur de la négritude’, pp. 9–13.

Page 75 note 3 Les Continents, 15 06 1924.Google Scholar

Page 75 note 4 For example, ibid. 1 july 1924, ‘Un Appel de M Marcus Garvey’.

Page 76 note 1 Cros, C., La Parole est à M Blaise Diagne, premier homme d'état africain (Paris, 1961), p. 137; but see also pp. 25–9.Google Scholar

Page 76 note 2 Tovalou-Houénou, Prince Kojo, ‘L'Esclavagisme colonial: nous ne sommes pas des enfants,’ in Les Continents, I 07 1924.Google Scholar

Page 76 note 3 ‘Notre Directeur en Amérique,’ ibid. I September 1924.

Page 77 note 1 ‘Notre Directeur en Amérique: du Liberty Hall au Camegie Hall et à Philadelphie,’ ibid. 15 09 1924.

Page 77 note 2 Ibid. 15 December 1924.

Page 77 note 3 Ibid. I October 1924.

Page 77 note 4 Ibid.

Page 78 note 1 Ibid. 15 November- I December 1924; also ‘M Diagne's Action for Defamation,’ in West Africa, 20 12 1924, p. 1441.Google Scholar

Page 78 note 2 ‘M Diagne prosecutes Les Continents: Maranism versus Diagnism’; ibid.

Page 79 note 1 Roi Ottley, op. cit. p. 108; also Gustav Gautherot ‘Le Boichevisme en Afrique’, op. cit. p. 424.

Page 79 note 2 Information supplied by Mme Rose Elisha, Cotonou, October 1966.

Page 79 note 3 ‘La Nécessité de nous organiser,’ in La Race négre (Paris), 06, 1927.Google Scholar

Page 79 note 4 Text of telegram quoted in G. Gautherot, op. cit. p. 424.

Page 80 note 1 La Race négre, 06 1927.Google Scholar

Page 80 note 2 Obituary, ibid. May 1928.

Page 81 note 1 La Voix des nègres (Paris), 03 1927.Google Scholar

Page 81 note 2 Lamine Senghor, ‘Ce qu’est notre comité de defense de la race négre,’ ibid. January 1927. Senghor was, of course, referring to the Comintern and metropolitan Communist parties as well as radical trade unions.

Page 81 note 3 It is true that, in relation to nationalist and revolutionary movements in the 1920S and 1930s, the Comintern pursued an ‘Asia First’ policy, and that its ‘theses’ on the colonial question, especially the Negro question, were superficial; see Cattell, David T., ‘Communism and the African Negro,’ in Problems of Communism (Washington, 1959), VIII, pp. 35–42.Google Scholar It is also true that the South African Communist Party was the only one established in Africa between 1920 and 1925; but to argue that Communist interest in colonial Africa suddenly began in the I950S is to miss the brief but interesting courtship of Negro nationalist groups by the Comintern in the 1920s. The German Communist deputy and publisher Willi Muenzenberg, whom Padmore knew well and described as ‘the Barnum of the Comintern’ (Pan-Africanism or Communism?, p. 324) played a key role in the infiltration of such groups, turning them into Comintern satellites. For details relating to the League Against Imperialism and its publications, see J. Ayo Langley, op. cit. pp. 533–4.

Page 81 note 4 Max Bloncourt, a West Indian Negro, practised law in Paris and defended the Dthomeyan nationalist Louis Hunkarin in the 1920s: see John Ballard, ‘The Porto Novo Incidents of 1923’, op. cit. Bloncourt and Senghor were associated with left-wing circles in Paris; both Narcisse Danae and Max Bloncourt were leading members of the Union intercoloniale (Section des vieilles colonies et peuples noirs).

Page 82 note 1 For Senghor's speech and that of Bloncourt at the Brussels conference see La Voix des Négres, 03 1927,Google Scholar also the official record of the conference in the League's publication Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont: offizielles Protokoll des Kongresses gegen koloniale Unterdrückung und Imperialismus, Brüssel, 10–15 Februar 1927. Herausgegeben von der Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabhängigkeit (Berlin, 1927), pp. 113–19.Google Scholar The only history of the League Against Imperialism is the one by Sorkin, G. Z., Anti-imperialisticheskaya Liga, 1927–1935 (Moscow, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 82 note 2 Lamine Senghor, quoted in Padmore, op. cit. p. 324. Senghor had also written an anti- colonial pamphlet called La Violation d'un pays, in which he envisaged a colonial revolution aided by the working class of the capitalist colonial powers.

Page 82 note 3 Obituary, La Race négre, 05 1928.Google Scholar

Page 82 note 4 See, for example, the summary of J. B. Danquah's presidential address to W.A.S.U.; ibid. November-December 1927.

Page 82 note 5 Ibid.

Page 83 note 1 In fact, Garvey visited France in July 1928 and met French Negro groups in Paris, and claimed that U.N.I.A. had ‘already cemented a working plan with the French Negro by which we hope to carry out the great ideals of the U.N.I.A. My visit to France is, indeed, profitable, and I do hope for great results.’ The Negro World, 4 and II 08, 1928.Google Scholar

Page 83 note 2 ‘Aux Etats-Unis d'Amérique: l'activité des nègres,’ La Race négre, 09 1927.Google Scholar

Page 83 note 3 ‘Ce que les nègres des Etats-Unis pensent de la race nègre,’ in La Race nègre, 03 1929.Google Scholar This was an extract from the Pittsburgh Courier translated into French, from which the above English translation has been made. See also Garvey's articles in The Negro World, 4 and II 08 1928.Google Scholar

Page 84 note 1 ‘Bruxelles et Moscou’, in La Race négre, 10 1928.Google Scholar For a more detailed account of the attitudes of both the Socialist International and the Comintern towards the colonies and semi-colonies, see G. Padmore, op. cit. pp. 320 ff.

Page 85 note 1 Tiémoho, Garan-Kouyaté, ‘Vox Africae’, in La Race négre, 03 1929.Google Scholar

Page 85 note 2 ‘Vers l'élaboration d'un programme’, ibid.

Page 85 note 3 ‘La représentation parlementaire coloniale ou la panacée chimérique,’ ibid. April 1929.

Page 86 note 1 E.g. Roger Baldwin, who represented the N.A.A.C.P. in the League Against Imperialism; Baldwin incurred the wrath of the Communist-dominated League, which duly dubbed him a traitor and a ‘liberal bourgeois American’ at the Frankfurt conference of the League in 1929.

Page 86 note 2 W. E. B. Du Bois's theory of the ‘talented tenth’ was the very antithesis of Booker T. Washington's views, symbolised by Tuskegee Institute.

Page 86 note 3 An error on Kouyaté's part; he probably refers to the second part of Section 4, Art. 14, of the U.S. Constitution.

Page 87 note 1 (Translated) copy of letter from Tiémoho Garan Kouyaté, secretary general of the L.D.R.N., to Dr W. E. B. Du Bois, dated April 1929. This letter was found in a dossier on Kouyaté and the L.D.R.N., Archives Nationales du Dahomey, Porto Novo.

Page 87 note 2 See La Race négre, 11–12 1930.Google Scholar

Page 87 note 3 Archives nationales du Dahomey, Porto Novo, no. 567 A.P./2.

Page 88 note 1 Coty, F., ‘L'Organisation de la révolte noire’, in L'Ami du peuple (Paris), 6 12 1929.Google Scholar

Page 88 note 2 Kouyaté, , writing in La Race négre, 02–03 1930.Google Scholar

Page 88 note 3 Letter dated 2 May 1930; Kouyaté dossier, Archives nationales du Dahomey.

Page 88 note 4 Statutes of the Comité universelle de l'institut négre de Paris, in letter dated 7 04 1930;Google Scholaribid.

Page 88 note 5 Letter dated April 1930; ibid.

Page 89 note 1 Lilyan Kesteloot, op. cit. pp. 19–20.

Page 89 note 2 Ibid. pp. 29–64.

Page 89 note 3 La Race négre, 07 1930.Google Scholar

Page 89 note 4 Ibid. April 1931.

Page 89 note 5 For details, see J. Ayo Langley, op. cit. pp. 457–8. Beton (or Berton, as he sometimes appears) should not be confused with André Breton, the surrealist poet, above.

Page 90 note 1 ‘To Be or Not to Be’, in La Race négre, 02 1932;Google Scholar this article also gives details of the L.D.R.N.'s accusations against Kouyaté.

Page 90 note 2 Ibid.

Page 90 note 3 Full documentation was sent by the Colonial Minister in Paris to the Governor General in Dakar; the enclosed resolutions, which are too lengthy to be quoted here, included equal legal rights for Negro workers in France, social benefits, freedom to travel between France and the colonies, access to all workers' unions in France, freedom of Negroes to form political and labour organisations in France, an eight-hour day, more opportunities for Negro soldiers. In the colonies, they demanded the right to form trade unions and to strike; primary and elementary education as well as adult education for workers, and freedom of the press. etc. Archives nationales du Dahomey.

Page 90 note 4 Ibid.

Page 91 note 1 Hooker, James R., Black Revolutionary: George Padmore's path from Communism to panAfricanism (London, 1967), pp. 33 and 37–8.Google Scholar Although Hooker has only briefly discussed the French African contribution to the development of pan-Africanism in the 1920s and 1930s, his study of Padmore's interesting career has established beyond doubt the very complex relationship between various pan-Negro organisations during that period.

Page 91 note 2 Quoted in Hooker, op. cit. pp. 39–40. It will be recalled that Kouyaté himself had written a similar letter to Du Bois as early as 1929, although unfortunately this was intercepted by the French police (see footnote i, p. 87, above).

Page 91 note 3 Like Padmore, Kouyaté's association with the Comintern ended in 1934, but in his case embezzlement, again, was one of the reasons for his expulsion. He was executed by the Nazis during the occupation of France (see Hooker, pp. 37–8 and 41).

Page 91 note 4 La Race nègre, 11–12 1934.Google Scholar

Page 91 note 5 ‘Sénégal, les trois communes et le mouvement négre,’ in La Race négre, 11–12 1934.Google Scholar

Page 92 note 1 Ibid.

Page 92 note 2 ‘Chacun chez soi’, ibid.

Page 92 note 3 Cf. Lilyan Kesteloot, op. cit. p. 20.

Page 93 note 1 ‘Nous Voulons’, in La Race négre, 07 1935.Google Scholar This attack on cultural synthesis by a group of French Negro intellectuals critical of the Senghor-Césaire group may perhaps come as a surprise to those scholars who have tended to concentrate on the intellectual origins of négritude to the exclusion of other groups and strands of thought.

Page 93 note 2 For details of the L.D.R.N.'s reaction to the halo-Ethiopian crisis and its contacts with Negro protest groups in Britain, see J. Ayo Langley, op. cit. pp. 443–6.

Page 93 note 3 Gaston Choubelle, ‘Les Organisations négres d'Angleterre’, in La Race négre, 07 1935.Google Scholar For further details of the Negro protest movement in France on the Italo-Ethiopian question, see ‘En France: hommage aux bonnes volontés’, ibid.

Page 93 note 4 Padmore, op. cit. p. 335.

Page 94 note 1 Quoted in Hooker, op. cit. p. 128.