Félix Eboué and Late French Colonial Ideology

Abstract

French Colonial Minister Paul Coste-Floret presided over the interment of the remains of Adolphe-Sylvestre-Félix Eboué in the Pantheon of the Republic on 20 May 1949. This singular honour accorded only sixty others in the two centuries since the Great Revolution of 1789 placed Eboué among the greatest heroes and cultural luminaries of modern France. He now rests with Rousseau and Voltaire, the great men of letters Victor Hugo and Emile Zola and the political heroes of Republican France Jean Jaurès and Jean Moulin. Félix Eboué, however, is the only black Frenchman among these great thinkers, writers and leaders of the Republic. His inclusion among the heroes of France in 1949 was indeed in recognition of acts of great personal courage. It was also an expression of French hopes and fears for the future at a time when vast populations of colour under French rule in Africa, in Asia and in the Americas were asserting themselves politically and culturally on an unprecedented scale. In death, Eboué became the symbol of those in France who were most determined to preserve French hegemony over the seventy million souls spread over the globe who formed the French Empire. His life as a French national, a man of African ancestry and as the man whose actions in 1940 helped transform Charles de Gaulle from an obscure Brigadier General into one of the most important leaders of the Second World War made Eboué this symbol.