Scientific committee

Organizing committee

University of Matanzas

III Seminar Of The Euroafrican And Eurolatinamerican Comparative Studies Group:
"The Decolonisation Of Present-Day Relalations Among
Europe, Africa And Latin America"
La Havana and Matanzas, November 20-26, 1998

The Euro-African and Euro-Latin-American Comparative Studies Group is interdisciplinary. The talks will be up to ten minutes, to present the investigation line. Each session will be followed by a double round table, first in between the communicators and after in between them and
the audience.

Seminar sessions will be organised as follows:

1- Decolonisation and neo-colonialism
2- The ACP territories
3- The Ultraperipherique territories
4- The decolonisation to come

Summary

The year 1898 represented the new era of the liberalisation of the European colonies. This is not the final stage of the European colonisation, not only as far as the American continent is concerned, but also in the growth of the experience of the colonisation. The metropolitan monopoly of the material and cultural power has disappeared. The proclamation of independence of the United States of America opened a colonial process that embraced a metropolitan model. The dynamics of the American liberation surged from the metropolitan illustration which brought about two revolutions at the end of the 18th century: the British American emancipation and the French Revolution. Both revolutions not only were the products of the illustration, but they appeared interwoven. The Old French Regime collaborated with the American insurrection. This insurrection served as a model for the French Revolution. There is an
incarnation of these relations: Lafayette, the French officer that supported the American revolt against the British was also the first commander of the French of the revolutionary Army: La Garde Nationale.

Therefore the New-England emancipation was a British product that comes from the political, philosophical, and economical British system. It was not an epistemological brake-down, but a new interpretation of it. The declaration of independence and the United States constitution were established on the basis of the British revolution of 1688.

The Cuban war of 1898 is the affirmation of an American power that opposed European imperialism. If the US intervention in the Latin-American affairs was already obvious when the French II Empire attempted to impose the Maximiliano of Austria's empire in Mexico. However it did not come to a war against Napoleon III' s army. In 1898 the former British colony directly confronted Spain and not only liberated Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, but it took the liberated territories under its power.

The Spanish defeat in America did not stop the Europeans from expanding colonialism on the African continent. In 1830, as the Cuban conflict was taking place an international expedition conquered Algiers for France. This affirmed the French African empire which constituted the beginning of its the greatest territorial expansion. Before this event African the mainland was practically unknown to the Europeans.

The Egyptian liberation and the nationalisation of the Suez canal by Nasser opened a new way which brought about the liberation of the African colonies starting in the 1960s.  


Scientific committee

Yolanda Arencibia
Alberto Bachiller
Pierre Brunel
Nersa Caballero
Joaquín Novella
Carlos Ortiz de Zárate
Jerónimo Saavedra

Organizing committee

Alberto Bachiller
Sonia Bravo
Nersa Caballero
Nancy Morejón
Carlos Ortiz de Zárate

Co-ordinator
Carlos Ortiz de Zárate

Participating Universities of Angers, Athens, Barcelona, La Havana, Las Palmas, Lleida, Matanzas, Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle-, Paris IV -Sorbonne, Paris X -Nanterre, Paris XII -Créteil, Pompeu Fabra and Venice.

Proposals for papers will be accepted until October 1st. Participants without papers will be accepted. A certificate of attendance and participation is delivered.