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Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
Frantz Fanon once observed that "the European spirit is built on strange foundations." Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, who combine their respective expertise in political science and cultural theory, propose that scholars have not yet sufficiently explained the origins and rise of the European Union. Behind the façade of peace and the preservation of democracy lay sordid motives for unification: European cooperation was intended to help maintain Europe's faltering empires. Racism and exploitation, the authors argue, more than a highminded interest in human rights, fueled European unification.
Eurafrica was envisioned as a trans-continental entity based on cooperation between Europe and its African colonies. Hansen and Jonsson highlight the surprising continuity of Eurafrican schemes through economic depression, tyranny, and war. Although its proponents liked to think that Eurafrica served the interests of all those who participated in it, this cooperation was rather one-sided. The exploitation of Africa was intended to help create peace and prosperity in Europe. After World War I, pro-empire politicians grew anxious about retaining their global empires. Many predicted that the "continental blocs" of the United States and the Soviet Union would come to dominate Europe. As a result, a range of movements developed plans to integrate Europe economically and politically. Austrian aristocrat Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who created the idea of Eurafrica, believed that Europeans could unite through a common project of colonial economic development. Given CoudenhoveKalergi's political connections across the continent, he struck alliances with a number of important leaders, among them Aristide Briand, who in 1929 went before the Assembly of the League of Nations and called on Europeans to unite. The Briand moment was the culmination of the European unity movement of the interwar years, but economic depression and war did not disrupt the dream of Eurafrica: various politicians, businessmen, and intellectuals across the political spectrum, with the notable exception of Hitler, sought ways to implement it. The Vichy regime, for example, offered the Nazis a stake in France's global empire.
Eurafrica began to take institutional form in a number of European initiatives after World War II,...