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Georges Balandier, the great French sociologist, characterized Robert Delavignette as “a solid and obstinate liberal.” 1 The description is well deserved. Delavignette was an able man, sensitive to change overseas, who also served as the conscience of French colonialism. His African career as a governor was brief; he served in the Cameroons as high commissioner for only one year, from 1946 to 1947. Nevertheless, he played a crucial role in the evolution of the French empire, especially as a writer, thinker, and educator. In his role as writer he was unrivaled among the French colonial service. No one was as prolific. For half a century he continued in an unending stream of books and articles to make Africa known to the French public. No survey of French colonial policy can afford to exclude Robert Delavignette.
Delavignette was born in Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine in 1897 in the old province
of Burgundy. His family was of moderate means, Delavignette's father working as
a manager at a small iron-smelting work. The picture that emerges from Delavignette's
writings is that of a relatively happy youth. His life was not socially restricted;
he spent much of his free time in the forge talking to the workers, absorbing their
tales about life in the old days and various legends associated with the career
of smiths 2. He obtained his secondary education in Dijon, where he went to a lycée.
His teachers seem to have been remarkable men, and he was especially affected by
Auguste Mairey, a geographer, and Gaston Roupnel, an historian. Mairey opened to
young Delavignette a window on the wider world, and overseas France was stressed
in these geography lessons. In a geography textbook that Mairey had published,
more space was spent on the empire than was common at that time 3. Roupnel was
part of the distinguished tradition of French social historians that culminated
in men like Marc Bloch. He stressed the importance of the social foundations of
French history: it was not the kings of France who had made the country but the
tillers of the soil, who by generations of their effort and suffering had made
human progress possible. He conveyed to his pupil a sense of empathy for the common
people and an interest in their culture and life-styles. The peasant was central
in Roupnel's historical scheme. The seeds planted by the teacher fell on fertile
ground, for Delavignette was clearly receptive to these views. As a youngster,
he had shown sympathy for the working man. And long before falling under Mairey's
influence, he had devoured the descriptions of exotic lands in the pages of popular
journals like Illustration and Tours du monde and in the works of Jules Verne 4.
These interests had awakened before he arrived at the lycée at Dijon and
developed further while he was at school.
Delavignette graduated from the lycée in the fateful year 1914. Within months
Europe was at war. In 1916 he was drafted, sent to the front, and wounded. Like
so many sensitive men of his generation young Delavignette was shaken by the mixture
of heroism, folly, courage, cowardice, and incompetence that so singularly characterized
the Great War. What he found most despicable was the callous manner in which officers
ordered men to their death merely to advance a few yards to win honors or promotion.
Sixty years later anger still entered his voice as he recalled the soldiers who
died merely to satisfy the amour-propre of some officer or other. This war experience
made Delavignette suspicious of an official mind blind to the needs of real people.
In 1919, along with the rest of the French army, Delavignette was demobilized.
He now had to decide on a career. It was expected that he would follow in his father's
footsteps and work at the forge, but the physical and spiritual destruction that
had been wrought upon Europe gave a special sense of romance to the supposed opportunities
and limitless horizons of the colonial world 5. Delavignette applied for the position
of, and was appointed, colonial clerk to French West Africa. He was assigned to
Dakar to the central bureaucracy of the French West African federation, working
in the personnel office. The work was routine and paid very poorly. But it conferred
one advantage: with some additional training he could qualify for a higher position
and enter the corps of colonial administrators. In the British colonial system
many of the clerical functions were occupied by Africans and further promotions
into a higher administrative corps was impossible. In the French system there were
few Africans in subaltern positions, and the Frenchmen who exercised these responsibilities-even
with little education could aspire to higher positions and eventually become governors.
Delavignette as a veteran was required only to undergo a six-month training course
at the Ecole coloniale in Paris, the school for colonial administrators. After
a year in Dakar he returned to Paris and then, having had his prescribed training,
in 1922 was ready to return to Africa.
Thus, except for his six months at the Ecole coloniale, Delavignette had no higher
education beyond that of the lycée, but that still represented a considerable
amount of formal training. The pre-World War I lycée had a heavy classical
curriculum that exposed its students to a vast culture, including Latin, the literature
of antiquity, and the French literary tradition. If weak on the history of other
countries, the curriculum imparted a good knowledge of French history and geography—often
taught together. Graduates of a lycée usually developed a high sense of
reverence for learning and culture, and in the case of Delavignette this was underscored
by his fondness for Mairey and Roupnel, both of whom were distinguished scholars.
(In France a lycée teacher was addressed as “professeur,” thus
little distinction was drawn between him and a university professor.)
All his life Delavignette was to be attracted to the scholarly world; he counted
among his friends many French academics, especially students of Africa—men
like the ethnologists Paul Rivet and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the historian Charles
André Julien, and after World War II the geographer Pierre Gourou and sociologist
Georges Balandier. Delavignette was a teacher much of his life; his writings in
the popular press in the 1930s were intended to educate Frenchmen about their colonies.
Then, as head of the colonial school he was directly involved with the education
of future colonial administrators, and years later when he had retired from active
service he was still teaching (at the Ecole nationale de la France d'outremer).
His interest in education was underscored by his long and active participation
on the board of governors of the Alliance Française—he even served
as its vice-president—an organization dedicated to spreading knowledge of
the French language. Beginning in the 1950s he also served on the board of the
news organization Havas, being particularly interested in seeing the press cover
African affairs. His membership in scholarly organizations reveal his respect and
interest in promoting the world of learning. He was an active member of the Académie
des sciences d'outre-mer, an organization founded in 1921 to promote knowledge
of overseas France. And at his death Delavignette was still honorary president
of the Société francaise d'histoire d'outremer, the foremost French society devoted
to the study of the history of overseas France.
Physically Delavignette was an imposing man; tall, with large shoulders, he carried
himself well and had a solidity that tall people do not always possess (one thinks
of the lankiness of the young de Gaulle). The people in his district were to remember
him affectionately some fifty years later as Tchidjan, “Big One”; and
his stepchildren nicknamed him “l'Eléphant,” his students at
the Ecole coloniale, “Big Bob.” The size and authority of Delavignette
made a lasting impression on those who came into contact with him. His habit of
carefully listening to people gave him an added authority. He was patient and could
wait to speak, but he was not cold. Rather, this trait of politeness added to the
general impression of the man as competent and knowledgeable.
He was witty but never sarcastic and liked to tell stories. With considerable relish
he would tell about the African mistress of the commandant who, when the commandant
had finished his tour of duty and was ready to leave, would fall into hysterical
bouts of grief. Deeply touched by this sign of affection, the administrator would
generously provide for her, and as soon as he had left she would prepare the official
residence, dress in her finest clothes, and ride out to meet the new commandant
to insure that she would be chosen his mistress.
Some of Delavignette's stories were about himself and he did not mind having people
laugh at his expense. One of his favorites was about his first experience with
buying supplies for his post in Niger. He arrived from France by ship in Cotonou,
Dahomey. There he bought canned goods and other supplies to last him for a year.
These were carefully crated and put on the tug that was taking him to Lagos, from
where he would go toward Niger. As the boat was pulling out of the wharf, a distraught
employee of the trading house came running to tell him that inadvertently two years'
supplies rather than one had been packed. Generously Delavignette (as many others)
offered to pay for the extra supplies; the employ gratefully pocketed the money
and waved to the boat as it disappeared. Reaching Niger, Delavignette found only
one year's supplies 6. His novel Toum reveal a fine sense of burner; it is a satire
of colonial life often showing the manner in which the white man and his ways must
appear hideous to the African.
Delavignette was not a vain or self-important man. Used to commanding and to having
respect, he did not feel the need to prove himself. This frame of mind led him
to avoid writing about himself and his experiences. The “commandant” in
his writings clearly is himself, but he did not say so. In writing about the colonial
administrator in many articles and books, he drew directly on his life in the colonies
without making the fact plain. A marvelous stylist able to write with great empathy
and understanding about colonial affairs, he did not publish his memoirs. The last
ten years before his death saw him rather halfheartedly start them, but his poor
health explains why they were not finished and why even the drafts of some of the
finished chapters lack focus. There was also an intellectual reason: his unwillingness
to put himself squarely in the middle of events, to make himself the hero of his
account. It struck him as unseemly. He was bemused by the self-importance and aggrandizement
of that successful memoir writer de Gaulle, and assuming the cadence of the general's
voice would say, “Général de Gaulle, il …” (de
Gaulle wrote his memoirs in the third person, copying Julius Ceasar.)
The main function of members of the corps of colonial administrators was to serve
as territorial administrators over the cercle, the basic district in French black
Africa or a subdividion of it. They also occupied positions of responsibility in
the government headquarters, the secretariat. To Delavignette's disappointment
his first assignment was the finance bureau in Niger. Its capital, Zinder, an ancient
caravan town where nomads from the desert traded with the sedentary people from
further south, was still a rather picturesque city reminding the young Frenchman
of the Arabian Nights or the world of the Old Testament. Sitting in the treasury
office, Delavignette yearned for the day when he would administer his own district
and perhaps emulate Commandant Henri Fleury, the administrator of Zinder, who—with
red beard flowing—rode in hot pursuit of horse thieves and was appropriately
nicknamed “horse thief catcher.” 7
Delavignette had to wait only a few months for his assignment. In February 1923
he was appointed administrator of the subdivision of Tessao, located west of Zinder.
He had as his superior an official whom later investigation proved both corrupt
and brutal. Refusing to obey his orders, Delavignette was badly rated by his commandant
and reassigned after a few months, this time to Dosso. This experience was to his
credit, however; the governor of Niger was impressed by Delavignette's courageous
show of independence and in 1924 observed of him:
Elite functionary of an education and culture superior to the average. Is an aide in the real sense of the word and one can count on his loyalty, his good sense, his sense of balance, and his general knowledge. … When this young official has acquired a little more experience and colonial initiative, he will make an excellent cerele commandant or bureau chief 8.
The frequent displacement that Delavignette experienced was common in the French
administration, and he was fortunate to be able to remain in the same general region.
These were Islamized areas with large nomadic populations whose relationships with
the sedentary peoples were always difficult; the age-old struggle between nomad
and peasant went on unabated. The former tended to dominate, and the young administrator
interfered when he thought their rule overly harsh and arbitrary 9.
Although Delavignette saw French rule as beneficent, he by no means shared the
low respect for the local chiefs usually exhibited by French administrators. The
sultans of the upper Sudan often had sophisticated governments with a firm control
over their subjects. To ignore the traditional rulers seemed to him to invite chaos
and anarchy. An administrator could not afford to take such risks. Delavignette's
early experience with traditional rule therefore convinced him that the French
administration must prevent the worst abuses of cruelty and dishonesty in chiefs
but nevertheless should respect and utilize the general institution of traditional
rule 10. Delavignette's ideas were probably an amalgam of his experience in the
field and the example of the neighboring British in Nigeria. Although many French
administrators were rather uninterested in the British or, for that matter, the
experiences of other European nations in the colonies, Delavignette seems to have
been well aware of them.
After serving in the Sahel region, Delavignette was transferred south to Upper
Volta. In Ouagdougou he served as assistant to the district officer, the cercle
commandant, the man on whom in the final analysis the efficacy of French rule depended.
He administered regions varying in size and population. At the extremes were a
small cercle like Cotonou in Dahomey, with only 85 square kilometers, and that
of Timbuktu, 500,000 square kilometers (nearly as large as France, with its 540,000
square kilometers). In population, there were in 1927 ten cercles having fewer
than 20,000 inhabitants and sixteen with more than 200,000. Most of the 115 cercles
were somewhere in between these extremes 11. The very large districts were subdivided,
and a junior administrator served as head of the subdivision.
The commandant had enormous power: he had both executive and judicial responsibilities;
he tried cases and carried out sentences. Among his duties were to preserve order
and to see that the regulations of the colony and the district were observed. He
was involved in political actions such as choosing chiefs—an important function
since the chiefs at the canton and at the lower village level were the African
intermediaries through whom French authority filtered down. He sometimes had to
act as diplomat, trying to reconcile differences between antagonistic clans or
ethnic groups. He had to know something about agriculture, to help encourage the
planting of various kinds of crops; he built bridges and roads; he took the census;
he collected taxes; at times he even gave inoculations against epidemics.
To carry out his functions the commandant found he needed a growing staff at his
headquarters. Delavignette was appointed to help fill this need in the cercle of
Ougadougou, where he served from November 1925 to January 1927. Though he did not
particularly like the red tape and dreariness of desk administration, he seems
to have done well and his cercle commandant wrote in 1926: “This is a first-class
official who will always be the right man, be it in the bush or in an office.” 12
After a leave Delavignette was assigned to the bush post of Banfora in Upper Volta,
one of the three administrative subdivisions in the cercle of Bobo-Dioulasso. The
cercle commandant in Bobo was responsible for the whole cercle, but direct responsibility
rested with the chef de subdivision of Banfora: Delavignette. The region had a
population of approximately 100,000. Each village had its own chief, and these
in turn were responsible to an African appointed by the French, the chef de canton.
There were nine such chiefs in the subdivision of Banforathese supervised by the
chef de subdivision. As such, Delavignette had all the responsibilities of cercle
commandant with the exception that he was formally responsible to the commandant
located in Bobo-Dioulasso.
Banfora had been a turbulent region that the French had had considerable trouble
controlling. In 1915 it was the scene of a violent uprising that had been put down
only with the greatest difficulty. Using the common device of “divide and
rule,” the French had brought in the Ouattara, a ruling clan from the Kong
region of the Ivory Coast, to help suppress the inhabitants. As a reward for their
efforts the Ouattara were made chiefs of the region. They were hated by the local
inhabitants and in turn had utter contempt for the people over whom they had been
given power. Forgetting that the French had put them in a position of authority,
they felt they had a right to rule free of European intervention. When the French
administrator of Banfora in late 1927, Livmann, fired a chef
de canton in that
district, the Ouattara precipitated violence; on January 3, 1928, Livmann was stabbed
and had to be medically evacuated 13.
It was under these difficult circumstances that Delavignette was appointed to head
the Banfora subdivision. He had had previous experience with ethnic strife of various
sorts, especially in Niger. By skillful diplomacy and a series of palavers with
village elders he was able to arrest the would-be assassin and reestablish tranquility.
Banfora was a poor region with few economic resources; the peasant lived at and
sometimes below subsistence level. Delavignette saw his role as increasing their
economic welfare as well as restoring tranquility in the region.
In the 1920s the colonial administration established seed cooperatives in West
Africa; under government auspices millet and other foods were stored for the following
year to insure that there would be sufficient seeds to plant. Delavignette actively
encouraged the local peasantry to contribute to the cooperative. The world demand
for peanuts was high and he saw in these legumes a cash crop that would give the
people much needed money, so he toured his district preaching peanut cultivation.
The peasants were naturally suspicious but overcame their reluctance. In 1927 450
tons were grown, and production increased nearly tenfold during the following two
years: 8,000 tons were gathered in 1928 and 1929. Peanuts were exploited for their
oil. They had to be pressed by hand, an inefficient method that yielded only half
the oil of an industrial press. Delavignette helped bring an industrial press to
Banfora 14, freeing much of the population from the back-breaking work of oil extraction.
Thus, the laborers could concentrate on raising food crops or on increasing peanut
production.
The success of the peanut harvests of 1928 and 1929 created a sense of well-being
in the population. Delavignette's espousal of cash crop production was very much
a part of the concern of the interwar French administration. But unlike many of
his colleagues, he made sure that his district produced more crops and he also
saw to it that the newly created wealth went to the cultivators. In many districts
the chiefs forcibly extracted labor from their subjects while withholding from
them the fruits of their efforts. French administrators often condoned such behavior
since they were interested only in high production figures for their district.
But Delavignette was genuinely concerned for the peasants; by discussion rather
than force, he seems to have convinced the chiefs and elders of the wisdom of letting
all share in the newly created wealth. His understanding and empathy for the Africans
turned him into a successful administrator. His authority was unquestioned. Delavignette's
methods were seen as a model and Covernor Jules Brévié summarized
his colonial career as follows:
During his colonial assignments Delavignette has always acquired the best results at the head of the districts he has administered. Intelligent, energetic, having very good judgment and tact, and absorbed with his profession, he has acquired a profound knowledve of African affairs. A talented writer 15.
As Brévié noted, Delavignette had become famous as an author. In
1926 he had written a semisatirical novel on French colonialism, Toum. Since such
criticisms were not appreciated in the administration, and indeed even the publishing
of general essays was frowned upon, he wrote under the pseudonym of Louis Faivre.
Once his publications had received some acceptance, however, he published under
his own name, and in 1931 authored the book that won him fame: Paysans noirs.
The title of the book is significant. Frenchmen had become accustomed to thinking
of the colonial peoples as faceless “natives.” Delavignette restored
human dignity to them. He showed the Africans to be peasants, black peasants. He
did not deny Africans their own personality, portraying them as inferior versions
of French peasants. Although it was his knowledge of French peasantry that helped
Delavignette understand that Africans were not uniform, they, too, had local traditions
and beliefs that deserved respect. Like the French peasants, most Africans lived
off the land; they were bound to it and their future depended upon how the soil
was treated. The role of the French administration was to help develop that soil.
The administrator depicted in Paysans noirs respected the traditions of the elders
and consulted them at length. By appealing to this tradition he sought support
for the changes that were important if the community was to live at peace and in
prosperity. Delavignette grasped what few colonial “developers” understood
at the time, that ordinary people must themselves become convinced that change
is to their benefit. Economic development should not be seen as a threat to a community's
way of life but as the key to its survival. Delavignette thought of change as a
means of saving the village life while auguring a new era. Thus, the oil press
in Banfora kept the young men from migrating southward by providing jobs. The community
remained intact; the villages did not lose their young men. On the other hand,
the new income received by wage workers allowed them to establish their own households
and become more independent of their elders than had been the custom. A new, freer
social organization was evolving. Humane administration would permit traditional
societies to preserve much of their structure, but it was also creating a new Africa.
Within African society there were forces susceptible of development and it was
these forces that, according to Delavignette, the French presence should encourage
and guide.
The role of the administrator was to deal with people not in the abstract but very
personally, at the village level and down to the household. The whole community's
problems had become the administrator's concerns. In this sense, as Delavignette
later was to write, the colonial administration was a totalitarian system 16.
The bulk of contemporary colonial literature was self-assured with regard to the
white man's mission overseas; Sanders of the River had no qualms about what he
was doing. The mood of Paysans noirs was more hesitant. The characters described
by Delavignette, white and black alike, were real human beings rather than heroes
and villains, The white administrator at times was filled with self-doubt: had
he misled his subjects, would in fact the rains come? Would the elders, so much
wiser and experienced, listen to a man in his twenties whom they still considered
a boy? What if all the efforts came to naught? 17 The attraction of the book was
that it is a profoundly realistic colonial novel depicting in rich detail the life
of Africans and of French administrators overseas. It was an immediate success
and won the prize as the best colonial novel in 1931. The novel was made into a
movie and in 1946 reprinted in a new edition.
Delavignette's health had not been good while he was in Africa. He had acquired
chronic malaria, some of his war wounds acted up, and he suffered from a punctured
eardrum. He was to become deaf in his right ear and later in life, at receptions
at his home, one could always tell who was the guest of honor—the person
sitting to his left. When the Agence économique pour l'Afrique occidentale
française, located in Paris, offered him a post in 1931, he welcomed a stay
in France to regain his health.
The position must have further tempted him since it allowed him to remain with
his new bride, Annie Mairey, the widow of his geography teacher, who had been killed
in World War I. Thirteen years his senior, she was a remarkable woman; for her
generation she was very well educated, having received the baccalaureate, a rare
feat for women before World War I. Her father was a schoolteacher and a member
of the Socialist party in the city of Saint-Etienne, one of France's industrial
centers. Annie Mairey was brought up a Catholic and had at the same time developed
strong socialist attachments. At the turn of the century, she married a lycée
professor and socialist militant, Auguste Mairey, and had three children by him;
the war left her a widow and she had to bring up her two remaining children (one
died tragically in an accident) on the meager pension provided to war widows. When
in 1920 the Socialist party split at the Tours conference she opted for the Communist
majority and sat on the political bureau of the party, the first woman to do so.
The party's increasingly rigid position and its growing subservience to Moscow—the
process usually described as Bolshevization—turned Annie Mairey against it.
Furthermore, it became clear to her that she could not be a Communist and a Catholic
at the same time. She left the party in 1924 but continued to have many friends
who belonged to or who came from left-wing political circles.
During World War II the home of the Delavignettes was a haven for resistance members;
Annie's son Jean Mairey was to play a significant role in the resistance, becoming
one of the seven commissioners of the republic—the superprefects appointed
by de Gaulle to administer France after liberation. By her connection with academic
circles from her first marriage and by her political associations, Annie Delavignette
brought into their home people of intellect and sensitivity. Her husband seems
to have enjoyed these visitors. But it would be hard to determine whether they
or Annie had any direct influence on the shaping of Robert's career and thought.
They certainly constituted an intellectual reference group different from that
which most colonial officials had. It probably made it easier for Robert Delavignette
to develop his strongly independent ideas on the empire, which were not in conformity
with the official doctrines of the day. Although everyone who knew the couple attest
to their deep devotion to each other, they were both independent-minded individuals
and Annie Delavignette does not seem to have influenced her husband's thinking.
In 1931, newly married, Delavignette took the post at the Agence gconomique. The
role of the agency was to attract investments to Africa and spread information
about the continent. He was ideally suited for the latter role. The opening of
the international colonial exhibition of 1931 was accompanied by the publication
of an ambitious series of volumes on the empire. Delavignette was commissioned
to author the volume on French West Africa 18. Beautifully illustrated with wood
engravings, the book is written in the style that was Delavignette's trademark.
It is highly personal, revealing the experiences and feelings of the author, yet
including all the official statistics usually expected of such volumes.
In a series of journal articles Delavignette wrote about the depression and its
effect on Africa. The French government and people—he believed—should
be concerned not only with the poverty of Europe but also with the misery of the
African peasant. He argued that the African's needs were in many ways more pressing;
often lacking the most simple amenities such as a water well or an iron plow, the
African was particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather and other uncontrollable
forces. Delavignette advocated “small projects” such as the digging
of a well or the installation of a water pump; they would have immediate impact
on the daily lives of a village. Grandiose plans of dams, railroad networks, and
ports were important, too, but they must not prevent the development of programs
administering directly to human needs. In article after article he tried to educate
the public about the needs of the colonies. If an empire united in purpose and
goal was to be created, it had to share the experience of self-sacrifice. Delavignette
scorned programs that sought to develop the colonies only the more readily to exploit
them; what was needed, rather, was that people in the colonies experience a real
improvement in their lot 19.
In 1934, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the French conquest of
the Sudan, Delavignette made an official journey to the Sudan and subsequently published
his Soudan-Paris-Bourgogne. The thesis of this book is that the Sudan was as much
a province of France as Delavignette's own beloved Burgundy and. like it, had a
right to its own life and personality. There was a symbiosis between these two
provinces—Sudan and Burgundy—and Paris. They gave human meaning to
the city; they both represented the historic verities of man, his age-old relationship
with the soil, and the traditions of his ancestors. Paris was pointing to the future,
but in order to gain wisdom and balance it needed to draw on the life of its provinces.
As in Paysans noirs, Delavignette was able to combine a deep appreciation of tradition
with commitment to change. Men's lives could be improved by technology. The oil
press in Banfora had helped enrich the peasants; the dam being built on the Niger
would help irrigate new fields for the Sudanese peasant. But for his life to have
meaning, the individual and the society of which he is a part has to have a culture,
a central focus of beliefs. Thus, Delavignette did not advocate simply the substitution
of French for African culture. Some aspects of French culture, for instance its
technology, would be useful to Africans. But the culture exchange was not to go
only in one direction. Frenchmen had much to learn from their compatriots overseas—their
reverence for nature, their ability to live in harmony with it, and their spiritual
values. By living together in a union in which each party would be allowed to preserve
its own personality, the interchange of values would help enrich both cultures
20.
As President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal put it in a tribute
published on the occasion of Delavignette's seventieth birthday in 1967, “What
makes Robert Delavignette a pioneer … is that in the colonial era itself
he overcame the dichotomy white-black, Europe-Africa, in order to create a symbiosis.” 21
If he never quite spelled out what the future political configuration of the French
empire might be, the general themes of his writings suggested a loose federation.
Beginning in the 1930s, he went against common thinking on colonial questions,
anticipating the evolution of the empire by more than a decade.
Delavignette also departed from contemporary orthodoxies in other ways. Western
educated Africans, he argued, should play an important role in the African parts
of the new federation. Such views were at variance with the attitude of French
administrators, who were as a rule hostile to the évolués. For all
their foibles, the évo1ués, Delavignette was convinced, were the symbol of successful
assimilation, an example of the future Franco-African community 22. In his personal
relations in Paris in the 1930s and the following decades, Delavignette was to
have close friendships with many of the outstanding African intellectuals residing
in Paris 23.
Having won a reputation for his advocacy of overseas reform, Delavignette was asked
to collaborate in the ministry of colonies under the Popular Front government that
had come to power in June 1936, supported by France's three largest political parties
of the left—the Socialists, Radicals, and Communists. Delavignette never
formally joined a political party, but it would be fair to label him a liberal
Catholic; in the 1930s and the following decade he was to be an active contributor
to the liberal Catholic journal L'Esprit, edited by Emmanuel Mounier. Although
objecting to being labeled a disciple of Mounier, in many ways Delavignette paralleled
the thought of the distinguished Catholic liberal in his social conscience and
deep concern for the social and spiritual disruptions caused by the industrial
revolution 24. The new minister of colonies, Marius Moutet, was a Socialist with
a reputation as a critic of colonial abuse. As a result of the influence of a common
acquaintance, the Socialist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, who as an ethnologist knew
Delavignette and recommended him to his Socialist comrade, Moutet decided to appoint
Delavignette as his chef de cabinet. Socialists in the colonial service were still
rare in the 1930s, and appointment of a Socialist chef de cabinet might have alienated
the service even further from Moutet, who was regarded with some suspicion since
he was the first Socialist to occupy the position. The minister probably thought
it useful to attach to himself a man known for his liberal inclinations who was
not a member of the party.
As chef de cabinet, Delavignette's main responsibility was to prepare the files
for ministerial decisionmaking and screen the letters and people the minister should
personally see. Though formally the chef de cabinet was outranked by directors
of various services, his position of proximity to the minister made him nevertheless
important. After World War I the ministry of colonies was divided into bureaus
organized along functional lines; thus, there was a bureau of political affairs,
one on personnel, one on economic affairs. Each bureau was headed by a senior official
with the title of director. The most powerful of these was the director of political
affairs; since nearly every decision overseas had political implications he was
carefully listened to.
Delavignette as chef de cabinet spent most of his time on the daily chores of preparing
files for his minister, but he seems to have played a direct role in the establishment
of a “program of small works,” which he had advocated throughout the
1930s—small projects of great import to people in a village, such as digging
a well or supplying tools and seeds 25. In political decisions he seems not to
have had as much impact as he would have liked; the director of political affairs,
Gaston Joseph, who was also an old African hand, usually won the minister's ear.
Joseph had been in the ministry for a long time; in the face of ever increasing
agitation in Indochina he advocated repression. Moutet himself was ambivalent toward
the overseas areas; although he desired reform, he feared the nationalist movements
and was determined not to lose the empire for France 26. In recognition of his
services, Delavignette obtained the rank of governor in 1937, a distinction normally
granted only to senior overseas administrators but occasionally bestowed on distinguished
senior civil servants at the ministry.
In the same year, Delavignette received a new assignment; he was appointed director
of the Ecole nationale de la France d'outre-mer (ENFOM). This training institution
for colonial administrators had been founded in 1887, and for over a generation
was a colorless and little regarded body that educated but a small proportion of
the men serving in the colonial service. After World War I the ministry of colonies
required that all men entering the corps of colonial administrators have some training
at the school, and in 1926 it acquired a new director, Georges Hardy, who freed
the future administrators from much of the traditional legal curriculum and stressed
courses that would more closely reflect the realities of overseas life, such as
languages and ethnology.
Two directors served for short and undistinguished terms after Hardy. Delavignette,
however, built on Hardy's accomplishments, placing further emphasis on a curriculum
reflecting the overseas evolution. He hired distinguished ethnologists such, as
Marcel Griaule and Jacques Soustelle. African language teachers were also brought
to the school: Diori Hamani, who taught Hausa, and later Léopold Sédar
Senghor to teach Mandingo languages—both of them gifted men who in 1960 became
presidents of their newly independent countries.
The school created a young group of administrators more in touch with colonial
realities than their predecessors. But Delavignette himself helps explain the excitement
and sense of commitment that animated the young graduates of ENFOM. He had close
contacts with his students, frequently having them to his home and introducing
them to his African friends. Several former students named their sons after him,
and long after they had left ENFOM they continued to correspond with their former
teacher. These contacts undoubtedly helped Delavignette to be so well informed
on the evolution of the empire even after he had ceased to go overseas. Dozens
of his correspondents throughout the empire—former students—continually
apprised him of what was going on at their levels of the administration, information
rarely reflected in the public media and even less in official reports to the ministry
of overseas France.
Delavignette's basic concepts as teacher and administrator are summarized in his
book Les vrais chefs de 1empire published in 1939, This book, clumsily butchered
by French wartime censorship, was reprinted in its entirety in 1946 as Service
africain; four years later it was translated into English as Freedom and Authority
in French West Africa. Much like Paysans noirs, it is the account of the life of
the cercle commandants, who, according to Delavignette, were the real chiefs of
the empire. In addition, the book was a programmatic statement of the duties and
responsibilities of the administrator. He is to command and exercise his authority
the better to serve the people under his rule. He must respect the culture of the
Africans but also bring to them the technology and gift for organization of the
Western world. He must realize that the colonies are changing, moving away from
their traditions and developing a new culture. The Africans who had obtained schooling
in Western institutions and culture would be the new leaders of Africa; these earnest
young men wanted to play a role in the new Africa that was developing. Though it
was common for many European administrators to scorn educated Africans, Delavignette
welcomed them as representatives of the new Africa. In Banfora in the late 1920s
Delavignette had been friends with the young Voltaic schoolteacher of the town,
Ouezzin Coulibally, who later became political leader of the territory. He counted
Léopold Senghor among his friends, and in the book Service africain acclaimed
him as the representative of the newly emerging African man; in 1945 each dedicated
articles to the other 27.
Service africain is a guide and program for future administrators; to those already
in the field it voiced their professional credo, spelling out the mission of the
colonial administrator 28. In his writings and teachings at ENFOM Delavignette
stressed French responsibility to the Africans and the need to understand their
evolution by being in tune with the times. With this, it has been argued, Delavignette
prepared a generation of administrators to cope with decolonization 29. His directorship
at ENFOM ended in 1946 with his appointment as high commissioner to the Cameroons.
The Cameroons, which had been a German colony in 1914, was seized by England and
France during World War I, the latter occupying the larger eastern part and the
rest being occupied by Great Britain. After the war all former German colonies
were declared mandates under the supervision of the League of Nations, and France
was confirmed as virtual ruler of Cameroons by being given mandate power over the
area it had occupied during the war. France had to account to the League for its
rule, but otherwise its administration was generally unimpeded.
Important changes occurred during World War II, however, that weakened French control.
The Free French under General de Gaulle had seized the Cameroons, and it played
an important role in the fight against both Vichy and the Germans. The control
of the Free French over the Cameroons and French Equatorial Africa was for a while
the only territorial claim to legitimacy that they possessed. The participation
of Africans in the Free French war effort both as soldiers and as laborers providing
needed wartime staples put the French in their debt. To broaden their authority
during the war, the Free French allowed a greater participation in political affairs,
which whetted the appetite of educated Africans for further responsibilities. In
both the British and the French empire the end of the war unleashed among the educated
colonial elite a sense of a new era dawning. Many wanted independence; others insisted
on at least enjoying equal rights with Europeans resident in the colonies. Neither
the colonial administration nor the settlers living overseas, however, were cognizant
of the profound changes in attitude that had occurred as a result of the second
world war.
Frustrations of various sorts, including economic ones, beset a number of overseas
territories, and the Cameroons was no exception 30. In the autumn of 1945 a series
of violent labor demonstrations had broken out that deteriorated into fullscale
rioting; the governor was physically assaulted and French air force officers bombed
and strafed Africans. Nine persons were killed and twenty wounded. Political ferment
seemed to reach an all-time high; the prewar youth movement, the Jeunesse camerounaise
française, now transformed itself into a political party, the Union camerounaise
française 31.
Internationally French control over the territory also seemed threatened. The draft
of the French constitution of 1945 provided for full integration of French overseas
territories with the metropole. But the United Nations Charter elaborated in San
Francisco in April 1945 forbade such integration and gave the trusteeship council
considerable control over the former mandates. Would France be allowed to administer
the Cameroons; furthermore, could it be retained as part of the French empire?
In considering these problems French colonial ministers vacillated between foolhardy
boldness and timidity. Jacques Soustelle, minister at the end of 1945, thought
the Cameroonian problem could be solved by dismantling the Cameroons, by having
the territory divided up between the neighboring French colonies of Chad and Gabon.
His successor in early 1945, Moutet, was afraid that the United Nations would not
even name France as trustee of the Cameroons; he thought that at best France might
be able to retain the territory by joining the British in a condominium rule over
the ancient Germany colony of Kamerun (which, in addition to French Cameroons,
was comprised of the British Cameroons administratively joined to Nigeria). It
was only in December 1946, when the United Nations General Assembly approved the
French trusteeship over the Cameroons, that the French were able to breathe a sigh
of relief; they would be allowed to keep the territory and administer it very much
like the other French territories; the legal fiction of its separateness could
be maintained by declaring it an associated overseas territory 32.
By December 1946 the danger of losing the Cameroons had apparently passed, but
at the end of 1945 it had seemed like a real possibility. To win for France a sympathetic
hearing in the United Nations, it was important that violence of the kind that
had broken out in the autumn of 1945 not recur, and the minister of overseas France
turned to Delavignette to serve as high commissioner. Moutet, who had worked closely
with Delavignette during the Popular Front government, trusted him. To the people
of the Cameroons and to the United Nations this appointment would be an indication
of the willingness of France to introduce reform.
Delavignette was a Catholic, and that was probably also useful. The missions were
a strong force in the Cameroons; in 1946 there were 500,000 Catholics and 200,000
Protestants. As a result of the League of Nations mandate, mission activity had
been tolerated to a far greater extent than in other colonies (especially the activities
of foreign missionaries). The missions had come to play an especially important
role in education, and Moutet seems to have desired greater state control over
them; if Delavignette were to carry out such functions he could not readily be
accused of being anticlerical. Also, Catholicism was politically important; there
was a strong Catholic union movement and the French Catholic political party, the
Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP), had reason to believe that the Cameroons
would be its political bailiwick (both deputies elected to the Constituent Assembly
in October 1945 belonged to the MRP). A minimum of political tensions would occur
if the high commissioner were of the same political persuasion. All these considerations
seem to have played a role in the appointment of Delavignette. It was his first
overseas assignment in fourteen years.
When he came to the Cameroons, he faced serious problems. The colonial administration
was set in its ways and failed to understand the political and economic evolution
that had been accelerated by the war. Shortly after arriving he told his subordinates
in a strongly worded circular:
If you resent your loss of personal or public authority because there is a representative assembly, because your subordinates are unionized, because the indigénat code is suppressed, because you no longer possess judicial powers, because the Cameroons of 1946 no longer is that of 1920, you are really demanding the impossible. Catch up with the times 33.
The settlers were another group resistant to change. The Cameroons had a well-organized
European population; in 1946 there were 2,500 Europeans, of whom 1,700 were French.
These settlers were wary of African participation in politics. Under the proposed
constitution of the Fourth Republic, each overseas territory was to have a territorial
assembly and send deputies to Paris. They were elected by two electoral colleges,
the first consisting of Europeans and a few assimilés, the second of the
mass of Africans. The first college in April 1946 elected seventeen European members
of the territorial assembly and the Africans elected seventeen of their own. Even
though the first electoral college had a disproportionate number of European representatives,
seventeen for a few thousand voters, whereas the seventeen Africans represented
12,000 Africans—the group enfranchised out of the 3 million inhabitants—the
settlers feared that they would not be preponderant. They demanded that their representatives
form a separate assembly apart from the Africans, a kind of upper house that would
have veto power over the African assembly. Delavignette refused to bow to settler
pressure, insisting that the two assemblies meet jointly. He thus prevented exacerbation
of a tense political situation, for the Africans would undoubtedly have vigorously
protested administrative collusion with the settlers. The Cameroons was the first
overseas territory to have a territorial assembly established, and it may well
be true—as Delavignette claimed in his memoirs—that his insistence
on a single chamber helped set the model for other territories 34.
The year 1946 was a difficult one for the French in black Africa; it witnessed
a transition from the old, prewar, authoritarian regime to a more liberal one.
In addition to the establishment of African political participation (even if limited),
other reforms were carried out: forced labor was abolished as was the indig9nat
system, which had given French administrators special disciplinary powers; the
rights to free speech and unionization were affirmed. This freer atmosphere led
to exaggerated fears by Europeans that their authority was breaking down and that
the Africans no longer compelled by forced labor and other forms of constraint
would cease working. In a speech to the territorial assembly Delavignette insisted,
however, that “the old paternalist organization … must cede to a new
organization founded on the principle of collaboration” between Africans
and Europeans 35. This collaboration was difficult, for as Delavignette wrote a
friend, “There are Europeans here who are behind the times by twenty years
and évolués [European-educated Africans] who are ahead by fifty.” 36
It was important to do everything possible to bring these antagonistic groups together;
little in that way had been done before. Delavignette was the first high commissioner
of the Cameroons to give a reception to which both white and blacks were invited.
The economic task of developing the Cameroons, Delavignette believed, would do
a lot to ease the tense political situation. Also, the stark conditions of the
Cameroonian population needed to be remedied; in the urban centers most lived in
slums, and those on the land barely eked out a living. Before leaving Paris, Delavignette
went to see the minister of finance, André Philip, to ask for funds. The
French treasury was empty and the minister received him amiably, saying: “All
I can do for you, if you smoke a pipe, is to share with you my tobacco pouch.” 37
A month after arriving in the Cameroons, however, Delavignette received news of
an ambitious overseas development program, FIDES (Fonds d'investissement pour le
développement économique et social des territoires d'outre-mer).
He helped set the first plan of FIDES for the Cameroons; it was to concentrate
on the infrastructure of the territory, 85.3 percent of the expenditures going
to that segment of the economy during the first plan, which lasted until 1954 38.
Roads, bridges, railroads, telecommunication facilities, ports, and hydroelectric
plants were built.
Delavignette's success in reducing political conflicts in Cameroons, the smooth
manner in which social and political reforms had been introduced, and the economic
improvements that he brought to the territory led the United Nations Trusteeship
Council in 1947 to congratulate France for its accomplishments 39. Years later,
when the Cameroons attained independence, its political leaders seemed to recognize
his contributions by inviting him to attend independence day celebrations. Delavignette's
record was so outstanding that he was promoted to governor-general—a rank
usually given only to the head of a federation who has several governors serving
under him, but also an honorary distinction.
When Delavignette had completed a year's service in the Cameroons, Moutet recalled
him to Paris to serve as director of political affairs at the ministry of overseas
France (the new name for the ministry of colonies). He was now the highest permanent
official in the ministry and occupied a key office during a critical period of
French colonial rule. During the late 1940s few Frenchmen, not even the Communists,
anticipated that the French empire would not survive another two decades. But already
there was widespread unrest. On the very day when Delavignette took over his new
office, March 29, 1947, a bloody revolt broke out in Madagascar. He sanctioned
the attempt to reestablish order, which led to terrible excesses. His reaction
to Malagasy nationalism may have been different from what it would be toward other
national movements in the French empire because he was intellectually unprepared
for the outbreak. Elsewhere, in Indochina and North Africa for instance, important
nationalist movements had developed before World War II; it was not difficult,
therefore, to grasp the nature of anti-French agitation. In Madagascar, where there
had been no such movements since the turn of the century, such activity could be
more easily dismissed as a mindless outbreak of violence. It is also possible that
Delavignette, faced by revolt on the very day that he took office, instinctively
ordered the restoration of order; to preserve order was the minimal expectation
of any colonial official.
Delavignette, however, showed considerable understanding with regard to Indochina
possibly because the evolution of a strong nationalist consciousness there had
already been well known in the 1930s. Unlike Madagascar, Indochina had been severed
from France during World War II, when the Japanese occupied the country. Upon defeat,
Japan evacuated Indochina during the interim before the French had a chance to
return; the nationalist movement headed by Ho Chi Minh was established and claimed
control over Vietnam. The French were at first ambiguous in their relationship
to Ho, but very soon fighting broke out. Filled with illusions, French officials
prosecuted the long colonial war hoping to find some alternative to a Ho Chi Minh
victory.
Delavignette was one of the few officials who understood the extent to which the
changes of the interwar era, the second world war, and then finally the Indochina
war itself had transformed the colonial relationship. In a series of courageous
memoranda he explained to his superiors that the Vietnamese wanted genuine independence.
The relationship between Frenchmen and Vietnamese had become not unlike that of
Germans and Frenchmen in World War II. Attitudes had changed, and the Vietnamese
now saw the French as foreign occupiers. Delavignette did not advocate outright
abandonment of Indochina, but he pointed out the difficulty inherent in French
insistence on remaining in their Asian colony 40.
The war in Indochina led to the transfer of French policymaking from the ministry
of overseas France to the generals in Saigon or the ministry of war in Paris. Thus,
the role of the overseas ministry diminished in Asia, and Delavignette's ideas
had little influence. In any case, in 1951 he left the ministry to return to ENFOM
as a teacher. His role as a policymaker had ended.
Although no longer with the ministry of overseas France, Delavignette was still
very much concerned with overseas developments. He had never served in North Africa,
but in the early 1950s, he viewed French policy toward that region with increasing
alarm. In Tunisia and Morocco nationalist opinion had made itself increasingly
heard, and the only French response had been repression. A group of French Catholic
intellectuals, led by François Mauriac, formed the Comité France-Maghreb,
which advocated negotiation with the nationalists and the granting of some form
of independence. Delavignette was a prominent member of this committee.
Many liberal Frenchmen could envision the independence of Tunisia and Morocco;
after all, they were legally protectorates. But Algeria was different: it was technically
an integral part of France and was considered fully assimilated to the metropole.
In fact, however, the Muslim population did not enjoy the same political rights
granted to the European settlers in Algeria or to the citizens of the metropole,
and most Algerian Muslims were considerably worse off economically than their Christian
compatriots. Muslim grievances could easily be channeled into nationalist agitation,
especially since a similar mood had developed in neighboring Morocco and Tunisia.
On the night of November 1, 1954, a small group of Algerian nationalists began
the uprising that was to become the Algerian war.
Many institutions were to deal with the Algerian uprising. In the summer of 1955
the economic and social council, a high-level government advisory body, took up
the Algerian question. Delavignette was a member of the council and authored its
lengthy report spelling out the need for a massive French commitment to achieve
the social and economic progress of Algeria. Implicit in the report was the notion
that such a pledge might curtail the spread of Algerian nationalism 41. Thus, while
making clear the social matrix from which the rebellion sprung, he, too, underestimated
the nationalist convictions underlying the revolt and hoped that if France carried
out a genuinely egalitarian policy in Algeria, vdth all the sacrifices such a policy
implied, the territory could be saved for France.
In an attempt to control the uprising the French army instituted a police state
in Algeria. The wholesale denial of human rights and the use of torture became
so well publicized that in 1957, under considerable public pressure, the government
appointed a commission for the protection of individual rights and liberties to
investigate the accusations made against the army and administration in Algeria.
Delavignette was appointed a member of the commission, which he regarded as France's
conscience in Algeria. He was committed to the notion that the total truth would
be most salutary to France's colonial mission. Anything else would poison the political
system both overseas and at home. However, he soon realized that the commission
report would fail to clarify the extent to which the authorities in both Paris
and Algeria had prior knowledge of the use of torture and other illegal activities
and were unwilling to right the abuses that had been committed. He resigned in
protest, having filed a severe report indicating the systematic disregard for human
rights that had developed in Algeria. He also publicly spoke out on the question
42.
In regard to black Africa, Delavignette was sympathetic toward the reforms instituted
in 1956-1957, which led to internal autonomy in the overseas territories and which,
from 1958 to 1960, led to independence 43. Although many administrators had difficulty
adjusting to these changes, Delavignette welcomed them because they would inaugurate
a new era of full legal equality between France and its former overseas dependencies
44. He was eager to contribute, no matter how modestly, to the success of the newly
independent states. In 1959 ENFOM had been converted to a training school for African
administrators, and Delavignette returned to teach-as he had in times pastthe men
who were to rule Africa 45.
With the end of the empire he attempted to put the whole imperial experience in
perspective and wrote books and articles trying to sum up what French rule had
meant for both Africa and the metropole. He also continued an old theme: the duty
and responsibility of Frenchmen to their fellow human beings in Africa. Decolonization
had not diminished the moral obligation of a richer and more technically advanced
society to help those less well endowed materially. Nor was there any less reason
to learn from African culture those ethical values and esthetic perceptions that
could enrich French civilization 46.
Insisting on the fact that the French had contributed to the history and development
of modern Africa, Delavignette had also been instrumental in advancing French knowledge
of Africa. His writings conveyed to Frenchmen a better understanding of the traditional
aspects of Africa, the world of the black peasant, and of the new and evolving
continent with its modern cities, universities, dams, and ambitions for the future.
Delavignette had seen in the French empire an institution that affirmed the unity
of men by creating a symbiosis between various cultures. After the collapse of
empires built upon force, he saw the opportunity of building new relationship on
universal human values.
At the same time, he attempted to preserve the bonds that he first established
with Africa over half a century ago. In 1974 he was still corresponding with the
chief of Banfora who had been village elder when Delavignette had been the administrator
there 47. He kept very much abreast of current affairs in Africa, interrogating
recent visitors to the continent on economic and political developments. When drought
hit the Sahel in the late 1960s and early 1970s Delavignette was active in soliciting
funds for aid to the region 48.
On February 4, 1976, aged seventy-nine, Robert Delavignette died after a long illness.
He was one of the most distinguished members of that generation of administrators
whom Maurice Delafosse called broussard, the bush administrator, the man who was
as much an African as a European 49. By his life and writings Delavignette had
tried to exemplify this ability to span two cultures. It is not surprising that
President Senghor said that he thought of Delavignette “with piety.” 50
Notes
1. Georges Balandier, “Robert Delavignette, un libéral obstiné,” Le
Monde, 10 February 1976.
2. His childhood is evoked in Birama (Paris, 1955) and in an unpublished fragment
of his memoirs entitled “La classe et la cour.”
3. Gaston Roupnel, Histoire de la campagne francaise (Paris,
1932); Auguste Mairey, Géographie générale (Paris, 1911);
idem, special texts on the colonies, La France et ses colonies (Paris, 1902).
4. “La Classe et la cour,” p. 23.
5. Robert Delavignette, Freedom and
Authority in French West Africa (London, 1950),
pp. 9-11.
6. Retold in his unpublished memoirs, “L'offrande
de l'étranger: Mémoires
d'une Afrique française,” pp. 71-72.
7. Delavignette, Freedom and Authority, pp. 9-11.
8. Personnel file, 1C 1143, Archives
de l'Afrique occidentale française,
Dakar (hereinafter cited AAOF).
9. On the Barmou, where Delavignette served in 1923, “Rapport politique,
ler trimestre Niger, 1923,” Niger 2G 23-24, and personnel files, 1C 763,
1C 1143, and 1C 685, AAOF.
10. Robert Delavignette, “Les chefs noirs,” Le
Temps, 4 June 1931;
ibid., 10 September 1931; idem, “La politique et l'administration indigènes
en A.O.F.,” Afrique francaise (hereinafter cited AF) 43 (January
1933):7-11; idem, Freedom and Authority, pp. 71-84.
11. “Documentation d'ordre administratif, politique, social, et économique
de l'AOF,” 1927, 17G 161, AAOF; Georges Spitz, L'Ouest
africain français (Paris, 1947), p. 90.
12. File 1C 1143, AAOF.
13. “Haute-Volta, résumé du rapport politique annuel, 1928,” Haute-Volta,
2G28/15, AAOF.
14. “Rapport agricole annuel, 1928, Haute-Volta,” 2G28/38, pp. 181-190,
AAOF.
15. May 1932 note in file 1C 1069, AAOF.
16. Delavignette, Freedom and Authority, p. 22.
17. Robert Delavignette, Paysans
noirs (Paris, 1931), p. 71.
18. Afrique occidentale française (Paris, 1931).
19. Robert Delavignette, “Le dispensaire au grenier,” Le
Temps, 15 January 1932; idem, “L'esprit africain,” ibid., 8 August
1933; idem, “Mise
en valeur africaine,” ibid., 19 September 1933; idem, “Le dynamisme
de l'AOF,” Afrique française 42 (1932):578-579; idem, “L'esprit
africain, l'Afrique occidentale française, et la conférence de Londres,” AF
43 (1933):336-337; idem, “Le bourgeois français an XIXe siècle
et les colonies noires,” AF 45 (1935):279-282; idem, “Action colonisatrice
et paysannat indigène,” ibid.:526-530; idem, “Les idées
et les actes en A.O.F., I,” Journal de débats (hereinafter cited JDD)
(9 December 1934); idem, “Les idées et les actes en A.O.F., IV,” JDD
(22 December 1934).
20. Robert Delavignette, Soudan-Paris-Bourgogne (Paris, 1935).
21. Léopold Sédar Senghor, “Un gouverneur humaniste,” Revue
Française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 54 (1967):26.
22. Robert Delavignette, “Lettre pour ceux qui ne savent pas lire,” Le
Temps, 10 March 1932; idem, “La médecine en A.O.F. — L'école
de médecine de Dakar,” La Revue mondiale (15 March 1934):15-19; idem, “Le
Dahomey à travers ses journaux,” AF 45 (1935):232-235; idem, “La
vie quotidienne et les feuilles locales,” JDD (13 August 1933); idem, “Le
théatre de Gorée et la culture franco-africaine,” AF 47 (1937):471-472.
23. Paul Hazoumé, the Dahomean writer, has depicted the role Delavignette's
home played in the easy interchange of ideas between Frenchmen and Africans, “Souvenirs
d'un Africain sur Monsieur Robert Delavignette,” Revue
Française d'histoire
doutre-mer 54 (1967):31-38.
24. Delavignette contributed a short essay in a memorial publication, 1950-1975:
Vingt-cinq Ans après la mort de Mounier — Témoignages, a special
issue of Bulletin des amis de E. Mounier 44-45 (October 1975):22-23.
25. Robert Delavignette, “La politique de Marius Moutet au Ministère
des colonies,” Actes du colloque Léon Blum, chef de gouvernement,
1936-1937 (Paris, 1967), pp. 391-394.
26. William B. Cohen, “The Colonial Policy of the Popular Front,” French
Historical Studies 7, no. 3 (Spring 1972):285-286.
27. Delavignette, Freedom and Authority; idem, “L'union française à l'échelle
du monde, à la mesure de l'homme,” L'Esprit 13 (July 1945):214-236;
Leopold Sédar Senghor, “Vues sur l'Afrique noire, ou assimiler, non être
assimilés,” in Robert Lemaignen et al., La communauté impériale
française (Paris, 1945), pp. 57-98.
28. Jean-Claude Froelich, “Delavignette et le service africain,” Revue
française d'histoire d'outre-mer 54 (1967):44-51.
29. Pierre Kalck, “Robert Delavignette et la décolonisation,” ibid.:52-64;
Charles André Julien, “Le jubilé du gouverneur-général
Robert Delavignette,” Le Monde, 20 February 1969; interview with Pierre Alexandre,
13 October 1965.
30. On the demographic impact and changes in Duala, for instance, see Victor T.
Levine, The Cameroons: From Mandate to Independence (Berkeley, 1964), pp. 53-57;
David E. Gardinier, “Political Behavior in the Community of Duala, Cameroon:
Reaction of the Duala People to Loss of Hegemony, 1944-1955,” Ohio University:
Papers in International Studies, no. 3 (Athens, 1966).
31. Levine, Cameroons, p. 145.
32. The best survey of the Cameroon mandate problem after World War II is David
E. Gardinier, Cameroon-United Nations Challenge to French Policy (London, 1963),
pp. 1-52; the condominium plan was anticipated to such an extent that Delavignette
appointed as an aide an administrator from the New Hebrides who had had experience
with the condominium relationship there. Interview with Delavignette, summer 1975.
33. Circular, May 1946, reprinted in Ministère des colonies, Bulletin d'information
(17 June 1646).
34. Delavignette, chapter 2, entitled “Une vie politique nouvelle,” in
an early draft of unpublished memoirs.
35. Speech of 30 April 1946, Journal
officiel du Cameroun français (15 May
1946):618.
36. Delavignette to Lacharrière, Duala, 23 November 1946, Delavignette Archives.
37. Delavignette, “L'offrande de l'étranger,” p.
307.
38. Gardinier, Cameroon, pp. 29-30.
39. Notes et études documentaires (19 August 1949):24.
40. “Note pour monsieur le ministre Paul Coste-Floret, 17 July 1948”;
memorandum, 22 February 1949; “Note pour monsieur le ministre, 24 March 1949”; “Indochine,
29 October 1949”; “Note sur la situation an Viet-nam, 30 April 1950.” All
in the Delavignette Archives.
41. “Rapport sur la situation économique et sociale de l'Algérie,” Conseil économique,
Journal officiel (5 July 1955):325-357.
42. The text of the report and some of his public positions on the Algerian war
after resignation from the committee are reprinted in Pierre Vidal-Naquet, La raison
d'Etat (Paris, 1962), pp. 168-184. The damage the war had done to France was a
theme he returned to often; Robert Delavignette.
L'Afrique noire française et son destin (Paris, 1962) p. 176; idem, “Le
pus dans la plaie,” La Croix. 30 March 1972.
43. Immediately after the war he had pointed to that
kind of development already in Robert Delavignette, “Le procès de la colonisation
frangaise,” Renaissance,
no. 15 (25 October 1945):14-21: idem, “L'union française et le problème
constitutionnel,” Politique 1, n.s. (15 November 1945):413-427; typical of
his later position in favor of an increasing autonomy for the overseas territories
within the framework of the French union, idem, “La croissance économique
des territoires d'outre-mer,” Semaines sociales de France, Dijon 1952 (Paris,
1952), pp. 213-229, and his attitude toward independence in idem, “Les transformations
politiques et sociales impliquées par le développement,” Semaines
sociales de France, Angers 1959 (Paris, 1959), pp. 297-311.
44. See Delavignette's L'Afrique
noire française and Du bon usage de la
décolonisation (Paris, 1968).
45. He paid tribute to his new students in idem, “Randonnée africaine
en terre de Gaule,” Nouvelle Revue française (1963):792-811.
46. Idem, “Tiers monde sans tiers état,” Revue
de Paris 72 (1965):82-91;
idem, Du bon usage.
47. Hema Fedma to Delavignette, Banfora, 29 July 1974, Delavignette Archives.
48. Robert Delavignette, “Famine africaine: Signe pour notre temps,” La
Croix 17-18 June 1973.
49. Maurice Delafosse, Broussard,
ou les états d'âme d'un colonial (Paris, 1922).
50. Senghor, “Un gouverneur humaniste,” p. 25.
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