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<div style="direction: ltr;font-family: Tahoma;color: #000000;font-size: 10pt;"><font size="2">Dear SAHSers,<br>
<br>
Please see below:<br>
<br>
The Great War in Africa:<br>
Economic, Cultural and Political Consequences of the World War I on African Societies<br>
Call for Papers<br>
19-24 October 2015, Dakar, Senegal<br>
<br>
<br>
Over one hundred years ago, we saw the outbreak of a conflict of such scale and intensity as had never before been seen in human history. Armies made up of soldiers from across the globe clashed for the first time on European soil. This war, which would be
called “total war”, saw the involvement of sixty million soldiers – nine million of whom would die, twenty million of whom would be injured. Given the scope of resources and men mobilized to serve in this war, it is evident that this was no marginal phenomenon.
France and Great Britain, who at the time had the two largest colonial empires, with respectively 50 million and 400 million inhabitants, drew a large number of their soldiers from there: with indigenous troops, the British increased their military strength
by one third, whereas the French added to their troops by close to 8%. Germans fought in North Africa (with their Turkish allies) or in East and southwest Africa. In East Africa, the Germans mobilized 11,000 African auxiliaries and 2,500 armed colonists. This
Great War coincided with the rise in imperialist rivalries, the growth of the territorial ambitions of the European powers, and the violent colonial subjugation of distant peoples. Following the expansionary designs of European powers, the conquest of a still
fractious Africa had reached a decisive point, corresponding to colonial development and the systematic exploitation of colonized territories. This great confrontation also involved the colonies where material resources and contingents of solders were obtained.
Although today we know much about the participation of African soldiers in the Great War, little has been written on the consequences of this first world conflict on the internal dynamic of African societies. Although any war leads to social transformation,
understanding the consequences of the Great War in Africa is of crucial historical importance. It is therefore important to assess the contribution of the war, as accelerator of social change, to the structural and multi-dimensional transformations of African
societies. Historiography shows, furthermore, that the various African social spaces came out of the war thoroughly transformed; with colonization and its numerous wars, African societies began a continuous interaction with European civilization. We will develop
the hypothesis here that this collective experience of war forced Africans to invent a new social modernity for themselves. Such a perspective can reveal the complexity and depth of these unprecedented influences of the World War I on African societies.</font><br>
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Too great an emphasis placed on the military part of the war has led scholars to focus almost exclusively on the mobilization of troops, the leaders’ strategies and the account of the engagement of colonial troops on various fronts. It has hidden the impact
of the Great War on social changes and the sociological future of the colonized peoples. War, as a significant social phenomenon, is a powerful agent of change in societies. The objective of this conference will<br>
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thus be to invite researchers to bring about an epistemological rupture, beginning with a redefinition of the operational concept of war. War is certainly destructive, but as such, it opens up new possibilities, modifies political groups, empires, kingdoms
and countries, and transforms social and cultural norms just as it changes the organization of production and economic trade. By contributing to a redefinition of the social status of the individual and the community, war invites a reformulation of relationships.
It is thus no longer a purely military phenomenon to assume the role of a powerful player, contributing to redefine social values, social hierarchies, individual and collective strategies and to reconstruct the general architecture of societies involved in
the war. We invite the participants to consider the war of 1914-1918 as a disruption of social relationships and as the polemic invention of a new historical meaning in colonial Africa. Furthermore, the social history approach advocated here requires a broad
disciplinary combination and the use of a comparative perspective which broadens the debate to include all of the colonial territories involved in the Great War.
<br>
<br>
Broad Lines of Inquiry to Explore<br>
a) Military Circulation in Africa. The massive drain of able bodied men would also affect women and children mobilized in the colonial territories in the war effort. Mobilizations for the war in Africa, which led to a forced inter-African circulation of men,
were also able to open new spaces, encourage visits to urban areas, and bring about technical and cultural changes whose long-term effects have yet to be gaged.<br>
b) Resistance, Collaboration and Colonial Societies. From the beginning of the conflict, the populations manifested their refusal to be recruited for the war. At first, this resistance was individual. Young people deserted, mutilated themselves, and practiced
“flight into the bush” or into neighboring colonies to escape recruitment. Despite this resistance, public figures, political chiefs or religious leaders would collaborate with the colonial administration (Marc Michel, 2003). Furthermore, the drain on local
agricultural production led to a decrease in harvest and served as a departure point for the restructuring of the system of production and the imposition of an open colonial agriculture giving priority to commercial farming. This war effort probably had significant
consequences on systems of production, the family structure, villages, clans and kingdoms. This challenging of dominant social groups would progressively reach the colonial regime itself; once back from the war, soldiers would reluctantly accept the constraints,
unkept promises and bullying to which they fell victim as indigenous subjects. <br>
c) Intellectuals in Combat. For some African elites, the World War I was the chance to develop an African consciousness (M’Bokolo, 2014) in opposition to the oppression of colonial regimes. Generally, it would give a new force to the identity movements of black
elites and strengthen their political commitment against colonialism and for the pan-African ideal. The colloquium will allow us to highlight little known faces of intellectuals engaged in the combat and also to underline the impact of the war in the genesis
of political trajectories. <br>
d) War Memories. It is important to remember that colonial regimes were also transformed by the war. As Jacques Berque would later say, the indigenous troops and colonial officials expressed “rival impressions” of this collective experience. These feelings
about the aftermath of the Great War are contradictory. Were we witnessing the definition of a new policy for managing the colonies? Does the consciousness of a “global decline in post-war Europe”<br>
(Albert Demangeon, 1920) lead to new relationships with the natives? Starting with this war, did they establish collective memories? In what ways did the various protagonists use these memories?<br>
e) The War, Intermediary between Worlds. The African soldiers involved in the combats in Europe and on other fronts alongside the colonizers would have an intense individual and collective experience likely to alter their general perception of “whites” who,
in the face of death, appeared in their basic humanity, without the aura conferred on them in Africa by belonging to the colonial power. The potential intimate, personal encounters of the African 3<br>
soldiers with the European population would have consequences once they returned home. This experience was also political: it could challenge the universal foundations of authority and superiority of Europeans, just as it could reassess those of the inferiority
of Africans. The discovery of other worlds placed the African soldiers in an unprecedented dynamic which transformed the representation that they had of themselves and the world. In addition to learning or rejecting new codes, new ways of life and new manners,
they gained technical skills through the use of objects (beginning with arms). Did this direct contact with populations, placed by colonial ideology at an inferior level<br>
on the human scale – that of barbarians and uncivilized, modify the image of the natives in European representation? Furthermore, should we not also wonder if the experience of this multiracial management in the homeland played a role in the implementation
of the “racial policy” in France, imported from the colonies? War is an intermediary between worlds. Africa was opened up to the rest of the world, and it penetrated into the others’ universe.<br>
f) Emergence of a New Africa. As a result of their Western experience, veterans had new expectations; this led to the emergence of a critical look at the social life of their native environments. The war caused the deculturation of the veterans, one of the
themes through which the infantryman is described: the characters in Sarzan by Birago Diop and Mamadou Tassouma by Bernard Dadié all trace the social maladjustment of the indigenous soldier who returns to his country. They called into question the established
social order by aspiring to another life, incompatible with the existing social framework. The colonial period is also a time of the establishment or recomposition of social groups; veterans entered into this competition with some advantages. We should not
fail to define the relationships of the demobilized indigenous soldiers, like other social groups of colonial society, with the new institutions that structure it: the state, churches, European school are unevenly invested. These relationships are important
in the evolution of individual and collective trajectories after the war. In this way, these young people transformed by the Great War are the actors in a slow subversion of social orders: clothing styles, diet, the framework of domestic life, romantic relationships
and the formation of couples, the sense of family and future of children, religious beliefs, criteria of social hierarchy, the style of political leadership, and the concern for the individual in his community life, were thus subjected to the transformative
pressure of the effects of the Great War. We should stress that this subversion met with significant resistance from earlier social structures, which continued to attempt to rule over African societies.
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Submission of Proposals Conference<br>
Proposals for papers should be sent to the following address by 30 May 2015 at the latest: jouedrao@ehess.fr and cmadeira@ehess.fr Proposals should be limited to one page. They must include a title, a brief biographical note on the author (with an email address),
a concise summary of the subject dealt with, a field and a methodological approach. The authors of the proposals will be informed of the results of the selection process by 31 July 2015 at the latest. The text of proposals chosen must be received by 30 September
2015 at the latest. <br>
<br>
Colloquium Scientific Committee <br>
Elikia M’bokolo, historian, Director of studies at IMA, EHESS, Paris / University of Kinshasa, DRC; Thomas Bierschenk, anthropologist, Professor, University of Mayence, Germany; Jean-Bernard Ouédraogo, sociologist, Director of Research at the CNRS, Laois, IIAC,
EHESS/CNRS, Paris, France; Catarina Madeira-Santos, historian, Associate Professor at IMA/EHESS, Paris, France; Rebekka Habermas, historian, Professor, Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany.</font><br>
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