Short Essay Three

          It is, perhaps, obvious to state that the period from the Treaty of Berlin (1885) to the outbreak of World War Two (1939) was a time of tremendous flux in European culture and identity. During the late Nineteenth Century, Europeans, especially western Europeans, were keenly aware of their perceived and unquestioned place at the top of the human evolutionary hierarchy. On the eve of World War Two, this perception had been seriously challenged by world events as well as domestic unrest and economic hardship. World War One, or the Great War, had undermined the credibility of the superiority of the European System and had created a sense of cultural insolvency regarding the traditional European norms and social structures[1]. As Europeans cast about for new cultural constructs, an openness emerged that would pave the way for a distinctly black culture and subculture to flourish. Thus, after the trauma of World War One, Europeans searched for something new, and this provided the space for both an importation of African-American culture from across the Atlantic as well as the development of a black counterculture in Western Europe.

            During the European expansion of the late Nineteenth Century, ideas of inherent European racial superiority were reinforced by the apparent fact of European geopolitical dominance[2]. Of course, ideas of superiority had been part of the European identity for a very long time but, with the rise of European hegemony, the facts on the ground made this notion practically unassailable to those who would contest it. For African-Americans, Africans, or people of African descent living in Western Europe during this time, there was little that could be done in the face of pervasive racism that was both institutionalized and informal[3]. This is not to suggest that the black[4] residents of Europe unquestioningly accepted the narrative of inherent European superiority, simply that there was very little social space to question this narrative in the heart of the Empire(s).

            The trauma of World War One and the cultural and political uncertainty created by the poor management of the peace accords upset the established social order across Western Europe. Long established ideas were suddenly open to question and existing social norms were being renegotiated[5]. According to Berliner, “Europe was exhausted, physically and morally” and out of this emerged a “cult of youth and excesses” that viewed European (and in this specific instance, French) culture as in need of an infusion of some fresh life force[6]. One of the most potent expressions of this could be found in the “Negrophilia” that emerged in Britain and France during the 1920’s.

            Europeans had long derided Africans as primitive, uncivilized, and barbaric. These “traits” were seen as proof of the inherent inferiority of Africans (as well as other “non-whites). However, after the devastation of the Great War, the tastes of Europe changed.  Many Europeans felt that there was a need for an infusion of some kind of life force that would reinvigorate societies reeling from the devastation of the war. A significant portion of the French and British public felt that this could be found in Black (specifically African and African-American) culture[7].

            At the end of the Great War, there were a large number of African and African-American soldiers who were stationed in Europe. Although Europe was already familiar with the jazz music that was so closely associated with African-Americans, after the Great War the “new blood and energy”[8] represented by African-American culture and jazz, in particular, was especially appealing. An interesting phenomenon, one that was indicative of European prejudice, emerged when African-American culture began to be “Africanized” in order to cater to European sensibilities. For example, in 1925 Josephine Baker burst onto the Paris stage wearing nothing but a Flamingo feather and performing on a set made up to look like the African jungle[9].

The European infatuation with Jazz and “African” entertainment allowed certain black people in Europe the space to develop “novel social contacts with whites”[10], or, it might be more accurate to state that it was the whites who developed novel social contacts with black Europeans. The distinctly black oriented nightlife that emerged during this time may not have been possible if not for the “Negrophilia” that was present in places like London and Paris, but the very presence of a “black” nightlife can be taken as an indication of the emergence[11] of a distinct identity that existed independently of the wider European society. This distinctly black identity can be viewed as a subculture, but one that, for obvious reasons, contained subversive elements. Thus, when the European black subculture was allowed to openly flourish after the Great War, what emerged was not simply a subculture, but a counterculture.

             Of course, the response of black Europeans to the current of Negrophilia that was then swirling within white European society was not uniform. The majority of black Europeans existed at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum and still endured the pervasive racism that existed among the European masses[12]. Black enclaves still remained a closed world to most Europeans despite the presence of elite white visitors who were “slumming”[13]. What may not have been apparent to these white social adventure tourists is that the parts of town that they considered exciting slums were, in reality, vibrant communities where generations of black Europeans had been born, lived, wed, worked, and died[14]. This process had created functioning self contained societies that had an acute collective awareness of their status as outsiders.

            It is hardly surprising then, that the black European response to the new cultural space that opened up after the Great War was not a wholesale endorsement of the old European norms. Once these black communities were allowed a degree of social expression, it soon became evident that many of the sentiments being expressed ran counter to the wider, white European societies within whom these black communities existed. For example, Bush notes that many black European males viewed sexual relations with white women as a kind of revolutionary act designed to repay years of “severe racial humiliation”[15]. These communities also tended to nurture political concepts that ran counter to the European Establishment. Adi writes that such communities served to “sharpen” the “political awareness” of African students arriving in Britain and that through this interaction these students returned the favor by contributing to “the development of radical, working-class, and anti-imperialist politics in Britain”[16]. Thus, with the social space that they found after the Great War, many Black European communities emerged as countercultures that spoke with a voice that was deeply informed by what we would today call identity politics.

            History has shown that once a community gains a voice in the collective social sphere, it will continue to use this voice to pursue its own interests. Negrophilia as a social fad would pass and the Second World War would hasten the decline of the colonial system, but the black communities of Europe would still seek to express discontent with the oppressive social structures that they had to endure. Although the black communities of Europe had existed for a very long time prior to World War One, the brief social reorientation that occurred in Europe after the war allowed for these communities to claim a voice in the social sphere. This voice was then used to express ideas and make demands that ran counter to prevailing European norms, a process which is ongoing today. For many black communities in Europe, the aftermath of the Great War is what first gave them a collective voice, and it is a voice that they are still speaking with.

           

Bibliography

Adas, Michael. "Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology." Journal of World History 15 no. 1 (2004): 31-64.

Adi, Hakim. "Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britian." African Studies Review 1, no. 43 (2000): 69-82. JSTOR. [Database online.]

Berliner, Brett A.. "Mephistopheles and Monkeys: Rejuvenation, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture in Interwar France." Jornal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 12 (2004): 306-325. JSTOR. [Database Online.]

Bush, Barbara. Imperialism, Race, and Resistance. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1999. Accesses via Ebrary.

Dalton, Karen C. C., Gates, Henry L.. "Josephine Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen through Parisian Eyes." Critical Inquiry 4, no. 24 (1998): 903-934. JSTOR. [Database online.]

Lorimer, Douglas. "Theoretical Racism in Late-Victorian Anthropology, 1870-1900." Victorian Studies 3, no. 31 (1988): 405-430. JSTOR. [Database Online.]

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[1] Dalton, Karen C. C., Gates, Henry L.. "Josephine Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen through Parisian Eyes." Critical Inquiry 4, no. 24 (1998):208.

[2] Lorimer, Douglas. "Theoretical Racism in Late-Victorian Anthropology, 1870-1900." Victorian Studies 3, no. 31 (1988): 408.  Lorimer expresses this with an excellent turn of phrase- Europeans sought “biological explanations for the geopolitical reality of the expansion of European dominion over nonwhite peoples.”

[3] Bush, Barbara. Imperialism, Race, and Resistance. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1999. 206. Bush does differentiate between the experiences of “the mass of poor blacks” and the experiences of “educated blacks” but notes that, although racism was experienced differently by these groups, it still served to limit the self-expression of both groups.

[4] Here I will begin to use the term “black” to describe Europeans of African descent. I do this because the term “African” cannot be considered to be accurate, given the fact that most of these individuals were lifelong residents and citizens of their respective European countries.

[5] Adas, Michael. "Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology." Journal of World History 15 no. 1 (2004): 41

[6] Berliner, Brett A.. "Mephistopheles and Monkeys: Rejuvenation, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture in Interwar France." Jornal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 12 (2004): 309

[7] Dalton and Gates, 934.  It should be noted that European notions of racial superiority existed within this framework. Europeans still felt that Africans were inferior, but had developed a taste for aspects of “African” culture nonetheless.

[8] ibid. 916

[9] ibid. 914

[10] Bush, 211. Bush mentions “coloured” nightclubs and “interracial” academic activities as two means that black European s engaged with white Europeans. The racial power dynamic is still evident in the fact that both of these forms of contact would still have been initiated and sustained at the discretion of the white Europeans who were engaged in such activities.

[11] It is important to differentiate between the emergence of a black subculture and the mere presence of a black subculture in Europe. Due to centuries of ostracism, a distinct subculture had long existed among black Europeans; however, it was the post World War One Zeitgeist that allowed for this subculture to claim a space within the public sphere.

[12] Bush, 211

[13] ibid. 212

[14] One can see in the black enclaves of Britain and France some obvious parallels to the Maroon communities of the New World.

[15] Bush, 213.  This notion raises two interesting ideas: first, by acknowledging that the act of sexual intercourse between a black man and a white woman is somehow a negative experience for the white woman, this idea can be seen as implicitly reinforcing notions of black inferiority. Secondly, how did this notion fit in with the interracial marriages that existed within the black enclaves? Were these unions somehow exempt from the idea of sexual reparations?

[16] Adi, Hakim. "Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britian." African Studies Review 1, no. 43 (2000): 71