Alternativas al nacionalismo en África Francesa, 1945-19601

In the decades after World War II, ideas of political emancipation were more diverse than the claim to a singular state for each nation or people: political leaders looked toward different political forms that would turn colonial empire into something else. Most leaders from French West Africa doubted that the territorial nation-state offered a solution to colonized people in a world characterized by both intense interaction and extreme inequality. Some sought to turn the French empire into a federation or confederation, stripped of the oppression of colonialism, enabling continued association of different colonies with European France and each other, maintaining a claim on French resources needed to reduce economic inequality. This article explores the possibilities and tensions among advocates of different alternatives to both colonial empire and the nation-state. That such projects ultimately did not come to fruition reflected the inherent attractiveness of nationalism as a much more contingent and conflictual process.