Project Description
An African History of the European Union (1945-2000)
This project examines the bonds between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the African leaders who played a key role in the foundation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). How did Kenya, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria engage the Commission of the European Communities? While South Africa, Tanzania and the Congo/Zaire, also engaged the EEC, it is the above mentioned four countries that drove the debate. Specifically, how did African leaders between 1945 and 1985 shape the aid and trade agreements of Yaoundé (1963, 1968, 1971) and Lomé I, II, III (1975, 1981, 1985)? Also, how did their stance on African governance, Apartheid, African unity and development, influence the relationship with the EEC and conversely how did African perceptions of the EEC influence African integration? By analysing European and African unification within one framework – this project’s conceptual innovation – enthusiasm surrounded regional integration after 1945 will be better understood. Moreover, we will be able to trace the roots of present-day discontent about the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU). This project studies the interaction between African representatives in Brussels and EEC officials who met in institutions that were created by the Yaoundé and the Lomé Conventions: a Council of Ministers, a Committee of Ambassadors, a Joint Consultative Assembly and a High Court. With its focus on African agency, the Experience Researcher (ER) aims to provide a global history of the EEC. The research on the relationship between the East African Community and the EEC is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council project “Regionalism in East Africa c. 1900 to the present” (AH/T003138/). Understanding how EU citizens as well as non-EU citizens understand the EU is conducive to a better understanding of the crisis of legitimacy the EU faces.
Personal Bio
Frank Gerits is Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations at Utrecht University, a research fellow at the University of the Free State and an external fellow at Shanghai University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at New York University (2015), a National Research Foundation Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow of the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa (2016) and a Lecturer in Conflict Studies at the University of Amsterdam (2017). He has published in journals such as Diplomatic History, African History and Cold War History. Together with Matteo Grilli he has co-edited Visions of African Unity: New Perspectives on the History of Pan-Africanism and African Unification Projects in 2020 and his first book The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945-1966 was published with Cornell University Press in 2023.