Caribbean Colonizers and Diasporic Imaginaries in the French Empire, 1880-1960
Philip Janzen
Graduate Student
History
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Time and Location
12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI
Download poster (pdf)
Description
This presentation explores the experiences of two men born in the French Caribbean in the 1880s—Félix Eboué and René Maran. In the early twentieth-century, they both joined the French colonial administration and were sent to Central Africa. The two main questions of the presentation are: Why did the grandchildren of slaves return to Africa to participate in its colonization? And how did Eboué and Maran later become symbols of black internationalism—a movement centered on the global emancipation of black people—despite maintaining their steadfast support of colonialism?
Bio
Philip Janzen is from Ottawa, Canada. He came to Madison in 2011 and received an MA in African history in May 2013. He is currently preparing a dissertation proposal on the links between Caribbean intellectuals and an Africa both real and imagined.