ORSTOM to help the Ivorians set up their own school of agriculture.80
As ironic as this may look, the request should be seen as evidence of the realization that French mediation could not be stopped abruptly as well as an indication of the refusal to give in to what Houphouët-Boigny would later call “cut-rate Africanization.”81 More fundamentally, though, the Ivorian demand for assistance confirmed Robert Keith’s observation that even as “many of the [African] leaders remain[ed] willing to accept the economic and cultural benefits of a French-African ‘Community,’” especially in the era of decolonization, the initiative for sociopolitical actions had “pass[ed] increasingly into African hands.”82 It is quite instructive that the deployment of such a newfound initiative occurred precisely when Americans were increasingly knocking at the doors of France’s dying empire. To be sure, this added another layer to the saga of modernization in Ivory Coast.
INTERLOPING ON AN ALLY’S DOMAIN? AMERICANS IN LATE COLONIAL IVORY COAST
To the alarm of French politicians, some opinion leaders and officials in the United States not only applauded the move toward independence in France’s colonies, but they also seemed to have wanted the suppression of European mediation in their country’s relationship with Africa. Consequently, they pressed for a revision of US policy toward Africa. Fearful that the disintegration of the European empires on the continent would create a void, which, by necessity, would be exploited by the Soviet Union, American policy makers and social scientists expanded the reach of the American empire of knowledge through the imposition of new epistemologies regarding modernity, tradition, and ultimately the meaning of the “good” life.83 If in postwar Europe this agenda was carried out through the institutionalization of American studies, the funding of cultural events and prizes, and the granting of scholarships to talented students, in Africa (and the rest of the Global South) the building of an empire of knowledge was graphed on the development of international and area studies as well as modernization theory, all of which aimed at producing usable knowledge on the emerging countries of the Third World. To this end, the federal government, private foundations, and major American universities established research programs targeting African, Asian, and Latin American countries.84
While hardly at the forefront of studies carried out by modernization theorists, Africa was never missing from their scholarship. Already in early 1950, Africanist researcher and diplomat Vernon McKay had urged academics to include Africa in their area studies research, claiming that the “time has arrived for a full-fledged program of African studies at a major university, preferably in the area around Washington or New York.”85 Echoing this exhortation, George McGhee announced a couple of months later during an address at Northwestern University that the State Department was pleased to cooperate with Melville Herskovits’s institution in promoting African studies.86
With the passing of time and the availability of new funding made through both Title VI of the US National Defense Act of 1957 and philanthropic foundations, academic programs and centers for the study of Africa mushroomed in American universities and colleges, including at the University of California at Los Angeles, Michigan State, and Howard, Duquesne, and Syracuse Universities.87 This focus on Africa in American academic circles culminated in a number of ways: an ever-greater number of American missions were sent to Africa to gather data so as to “inform long-term aid programs”; to foster a community of Africanists, the African Studies Association (ASA) was established in 1957; and to disseminate knowledge about Africa, a number of specialized journals were created.88
Given its emerging reputation as an economic engine of French West Africa or an intriguing foil to the radical British-ruled Gold Coast, many of the American foundation-supported social scientists interested in Africa, including Elliott J. Berg (1957), Immanuel Wallerstein (1957), Aristide Zolberg (1958), and George Horner (1958–1959), found their way into Ivory Coast.89 Although many of these junior scholars were critical of the US government, the knowledge they produced not only competed with French academic discourse on the country, but also soon became the resource for building an informal American empire in Ivorian territory, particularly so since the knowledge they disseminated extended the ethnographic gaze of the United States into late colonial Ivory Coast, a phenomenon that added to the concerns of the colonial state.90
Thus, even as they accepted the presence of a US consulate in Ivory Coast, the French authorities never dropped their suspicion of the Americans. Betraying this mistrust of their Atlantic partner was the French refusal to allow a US Information Service (USIS) to be adjoined to the consular offices in Abidjan.91 Furthermore, the colonial officials in Abidjan kept a watch on the activities of the American researchers, including both Wallerstein and Zolberg.92 It was in this climate of suspicion that the first American consul was recalled, allegedly for making public statements during the 1958 referendum that a French diplomat found “unpleasant and preposterous.”93
The suspicion of the French colonial authorities was not without foundation. The memory of Vietnam was still fresh on the minds of many French diplomats, who now saw the reincarnation of the “quiet American” in every American diplomat posted in a French colony.94 Compounding this situation, American businesses were increasingly showing interest in Ivory Coast, whose leading city they aspired to use as a regional gateway to the other territories of French West Africa. Their interest was all the more well targeted since the dissemination of the first results of the many research projects supported by the Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and other US foundations confirmed the relative edge of Ivory Coast over the other French-speaking countries in West Africa.95 In this context, the Plymouth Oil Company expressed an interest in deep drilling near the coast of Abidjan.96 Similarly, David E. Lilienthal—the world-renowned former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority—established contacts with the Ivorian government in Abidjan in anticipation of a contract that would eventually allow his consulting firm (Development and Resources Corporation) to undertake development planning work for Ivory Coast.97
Such American interest was matched by the desire of the Ivorian leadership to tap the benefits of the emerging development aid industry. During a stay in November 1959 in the United States, where he headed the French delegation to a United Nations (UN) meeting, Houphouët-Boigny highlighted an aspect of this aspiration when he attempted to convince the Americans to assist only their “true friends.” Reportedly, he told President Dwight D. Eisenhower not to provide any help to those “African countries that have asked and obtained aid from the communists. We, your friends and who have already chosen to be by your side in the Western Bloc, we should be able to count on you.”98 This move prefigured the Ivorian statesman’s postindependence deployment of the global Cold War card to advance his developmental agenda for Ivory Coast. In some cases, the strategy paid off—at least in the short term. Yet problems were brewing. For despite the growth of the local economy, the benefits of the postwar boom did not always trickle down to the people, thus creating an atmosphere of resentment likely to explode in violence.
An indication of this explosive situation had already occurred in October 1958, when, led by the Ligue des Originaires de Côte d’Ivoire (LOCI), unemployed Ivorian youth and other segments of the population of Abidjan began to attack Dahomeyans, Togolese, and other foreign Africans whom they accused of monopolizing the market of white-collar jobs. By the end of the month, it was estimated that more than five hundred houses had been damaged or destroyed. Concomitantly, about twenty-five thousand African foreigners were coerced into leaving the country. While law and order were restored in the subsequent weeks, this first wave of xenophobic riots in Abidjan revealed that the Houphouëtian vision of Ivorian development was fraught with perils that could erupt anytime into forceful collective action.99
The most serious threat to Houphouët-Boigny’s dream, however, came from the educated cadres of the Parti Démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) and the Ivorian university students who were studying in France. At the time of the désapparentement in the early 1950s, many of them had criticized their
