ECAS 2013

This paper aims to explore and compare the dynamics which developed in French and British colonies in West Africa toward the hajj.It will focus in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the eve of Second World War, analyzing the historical developments of different colonial policies toward the pilgrimage of West Africans Muslims to Mecca and Medina. I claim that the hajj pilgrimage could be defined as religious migration, one that resulted in mobilizing social and cultural changes. Though the hajj was nothing new in the history of West African Muslims, the colonial era carried some major changes in its patterns, both in its scope and intensity, and in its influence on the mobilization of people and ideas both to the sending and receiving societies.

The paper further posits that hajj routes during the colonial era moved from colony to colony, and in some cases created new communities of pilgrims along the route. In this sense, the hajj could be seen as a religiously motivated migration. As such, I will examine the idea that this migration was an engine for social and cultural change, in the sense that the migrants may hope to contribute additional resources or benefits to the receiving community. As such, this research will form part of the broader effort to assess the effects of migrations on world history, particularly in non-western regions where this process has been less thoroughly studied.

The extended dispersion around the world of people of African roots has been usually associated to the European slave trade of pre-colonial times and to the renewed displacements that developed during the independent period -especially since the last decades of 20th century- in order to evade economic crisis, wars and authoritarian governments. Nevertheless, we can also speak about an overseas dispersion as a result of spontaneous migrations that took place in colonial times as a deliberate initiative of Sub-Saharan Africans. These population movements transcended the simple action of escaping from oppressing conditions of foreign domination; they have been conscious strategies of labour and ideological insertion.

There is no doubt: economic constraints and political limitations drove to the decision of migrating that led to decades of population displacements from the main departure point of Cape Verde archipelago, located in a privileged Atlantic position. Anyway, it also implied the construction of early collective identity definitions inside and beyond colonial boundaries, with the purpose of inserting in an occidental world where sophisticated laws had begun to classify people as "desirable" and "undesirable" appealing to the racialized principles that supported imperialist expansion. Our objective is to recover these initiatives and to analyse them as means of colonial resistance and as a main frame of the liberation struggle.

International Relations and African History are two fields of study that can be enriched by cross-fertilization. Debates in IR about the expansion of the European international society overseas (namely Africa), about its transformation into a world society, and more specifically about structure and agency in this process, have much to gain from taking into consideration the African history of the last century.

The English School is one school of thought in IR that has been characterized by its emphasis in history, and that has worked on the recent transformation of the international as a consequence of imperialism and decolonization. Nevertheless, much work can still be done as nowadays some of its classical accounts can be understood as top-down, with a strong Eurocentric perspective, and as such reproducing the image of Africa as in the margins of the international society.

Focusing in Ethiopian history and in the process by which this state came to be a part of the international society, and highlighting Ethiopian agency, I would like to contribute to these debates on the expansion of international society as much as to the panel's objective of reconstructing the impact of African history inside and outside the continent.

At the end of 2010, many uprisings had brook up in the whole of North Africa Algeria,Tunisia,Lybia,Morroco,Egypt) and put an end the authoritarian regimes well-entrenched since the years 1950-1960 .

These uprisings called for new political regimes based on dignity, social justice and democracy.

Soon after ,mass-medias and several writings and books had pointed out the "Foreign Conspiracy " sheme which spread out all over North Africa as well in Europe and United States .The "Foreign Conspiracy" sheme seems to have been underscored by the NATO intervention in Libya.

The present paper looks at the issue of whether those uprisings are outcome of the play of Global Geopolitics or result of internal dynamism of the North African societies.

In this regard,

1- The "Foreign conspiracy" sheme is tackled within this presentation

2- The events facts (outbreak ,political and social mobilization, fall of authoritarian regimes) are also being examined in the paper

3- The role of internal dynamisms with the outburst of the masses in politics is, at last, addressed.