Shortly after winning the 2007 French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy visited West Africa. His trip was meant, in part, to address the vexing question of relations between former colonizer and colonized. In a speech at Dakar, Sarkozy admitted the sins of French colonialism. He also, however, insisted on a brighter side to the coin of imperialism. The colonizer, he declared, took but also gave. "He built bridges, roads, hospitals, dispensaries and schools." There were, he continued, men of goodwill who believed they were fulfilling a civilizing mission, people who believed they were doing good." Colonization, he concluded, "is not responsible for all the current difficulties of Africa. It is not responsible for the bloody wars between Africans, for the genocides, for the dictators, the fanaticism [and] the corruption."
As the Ivory Coast, once a French colony, remains caught in a brutal political stalemate, and Tunisia, once a French protectorate, slides ever more deeply into political anarchy, Sarkozy no doubt continues to believe that "bloody wars" and "dictators" on the continent are not the work of France. But a brief glance at the impact of France's "civilizing mission" in Africa would prove him wrong.
Undoubtedly, there were French men (and women) of good will who went to Africa in order to broadcast the benefits of French civilization - but what was the stuff of this benevolence? For nineteenth century French republicans their nation's "right and duty" was to educate "inferior races." Alongside this moral imperative was an economic motive: make the colonies pay for themselves. When this goal proved too elusive, French colonial administrators, in concert with French companies with interests in Africa, resorted to forced labor. The roads and bridges praised by Sarkozy were conceived by the French - but as Sarkozy somehow overlooked - built by the brutalized inhabitants of these lands.
Though André Gide and others denounced these barbaric practices, their exposés were never followed by political or institutional reforms. As a result, the fiction of the civilizing mission left a tremendous structural void by the 1950s. By then, facing the inevitability of independence for its imperial possessions, France skillfully executed a diplomatic sleight of hand. France announced it was bestowing independence on Francophone North Africa - with the tragic exception of Algeria - and West Africa. As a result, France managed to maintain its influence in post-colonial politics in Africa, while also maintaining its prestige on the global stage as a political and cultural power. It was as if, pace Giuseppe di Lampedusa, things had to change so that they would stay the same.
Better to paraphrase Tacitus: France created the conditions for chronic political dysfunction, and called it decolonization. To maintain its presence in these newly independent nations, France cultivated ties with local leaders whose attachment to France's cultural and economic goals was stronger than their commitment to democratic values. In the Ivory Coast, France aided in the rise to power of Félix Houphouet-Boigny, who served his political apprenticeship as a member of the postwar French National Assembly. Thanks to his country's steady economic growth, along with the presence of French military forces, Houphouet-Boigny became president for life, coming as close as one can to embodying the oxymoron "benevolent dictator." When the export-based economy began to falter in the 1980s, however, Houphouet-Boigny played down his benevolence and played up his dictatorial ways. His death was preceded by the state's efforts to suppress spasms of popular unrest. Ultimately, his political opponent Laurent Gbagbo took power - the very same man who now refuses to surrender power to Alassane Ouattara, who defeated him in the recent presidential election.
As for Tunisia, the many historical, religious and geopolitical differences are balanced by unfortunate similarities. In 1956, Habib Bourguiba led this small Mediterranean nation to independence. Unlike Houphouet-Boigny, Bourguiba was a socialist who had long opposed French rule - opposition that led to repeated prison terms. Once in power, though, he dropped his socialist ideals and adopted liberal economic and social policies that endeared his regime to France. As for democratic ideals, Bourguiba had precious few to drop in the first place - which was fine with France, particularly given Bourguiba's hostility to politicized Islam. When his rule, like Houphouet-Boigny's, grew sclerotic, Bourguiba was pushed aside by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who, until last week, ruled Tunisia with the same disdain for democracy and indulgence of France.
Since the start of 2011, events in the Ivory Coast and Tunisia have delivered a one-two punch to Sarkozy's kinder and gentler interpretation of the civilizing mission. Gbagbo blithely ignores France's ultimatum to obey the will of the people, while Tunisian protesters have ignored France's tacit support of a dictator who flouted the will of the people. These events are only seemingly opposed: they both, in fact, reflect that France's civilizing mission was always a mission impossible.
