Félix Éboué

Governor-general of French Equatorial Africa (1941-1944)

• Born: December 26, 1884
• Birthplace: Cayenne, French Guiana
• Died: May 17, 1944
• Place of death: Cairo, Egypt

Éboué rose from the lower ranks of the French colonial service to become the first black governor of Guadeloupe, the first black governor of Chad, and the first black governor-general in French-speaking Africa when he was appointed to head former French Equatorial Africa in 1941.

Early Life

Félix Éboué (fay-leeks ayb-way) was born to Yves Éboué and Aurélie Leveilles. He was the youngest of four brothers and one sister. (Eboué, based on a West African word, was the name of his paternal great-grandfather, who was a slave.) Félix’s mother, a devout Roman Catholic, was a homemaker but eventually owned and ran a candy store to sustain the family. His father was a gold searcher who died in 1898. Félix’s three brothers died either from drowning in rivers while searching for gold or from disease, before even having the chance to marry. As a result, young Félix had to help his mother at home, even to the point of cooking meals after school, while Madame Éboué took care of the store. She was determined, however, to sacrifice all of her savings to ensure that young Félix would be educated in France and become prominent in Guianese society.

In elementary and secondary school (at the Collège de Cayenne), Éboué distinguished himself in French and music. In 1901, he was graduated from the first years of secondary school and received a teaching certificate (brevet de capacité pour l’enseignement) and immediately received a government scholarship to complete his high school at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux, France. He received his baccalauréat in 1905 and was accepted at the Colonial School in Paris, as he chose to become a career civil servant.

At both schools, however, Éboué had been a mediocre student, still loving French and music but doing poorly in military-related courses. He was heavily involved in extracurricular activities, is said to have had an Italian mistress, played bridge constantly, and was a chain smoker. While at the Lycée Montaigne, he was exposed to and embraced the Stoic and Pythagorean philosophy that would mold his outlook on life after he repudiated Catholicism. At both schools, he had had several classmates, such as René Maran, who later became important friends and supporters.

Also at the Colonial School, Éboué studied under Africanist historian and ethnographer Maurice Delafosse, who interested him in ethnography and linguistics and helped him to appreciate the culture of the African peoples. In spite of his mediocre performance, Éboué was graduated from the Colonial School and was assigned to work in Madagascar. Eventually, the colonial office changed his assignment and sent him instead to Brazzaville, Congo, where he arrived on January 21, 1909. Éboué disliked Brazzaville and requested to be posted in Oubangui-Chari (now the Central African Republic), where René Maran’s father and the former governor of French Guiana, Émile Merwart (who had approved his scholarship to France), worked. Merwart was the governor there. Éboué’s request was accepted, and he moved on to Bangui, the capital of Oubangui-Chari. He felt mentally prepared and adequately trained to work in Africa rather than in his preferred Antilles.

Life’s Work

In Oubangui-Chari in 1909, Éboué, twenty-five years old then, was posted to Bouca, capital of the Ouam circumscription, as a cadet administrator and as an assistant treasurer. He had decided that, wherever he worked, his first task would be to learn about the people and familiarize himself with this large circumscription of Oubangui-Chari. He took a Mandja teenager as his companion (they had a son, Henri-Yves-Félix Éboué, in 1912). In 1910, Éboué was promoted to deputy administrator third class. (At Bouca, he was joined by his best friend Maran, who was posted there in 1910.) It was in Bouca that Éboué showed his incipient administrative skills. He opened schools (at some of which he himself taught when he had the time), built roads, and urged the people to work for the development of their territory. Whenever they refused, however, he did not hesitate to use force to make them do so, as this was part of the colonial system. He learned the local language, befriended the African chiefs, and began a systematic study of the peoples’ customs and traditions as well as of their music. His superiors were impressed with his achievements.

Following a six-month vacation in France and Guiana in 1912, Éboué returned to Oubangui-Chari but was transferred as deputy administrator (1913-1914) to Ombello-Mondjo, where he gained the unflattering reputation of being the one who imprisoned many Africans who attempted to migrate to the Belgian Congo to escape forced labor and taxes. As usual, he maintained his friendship with and respect for the African local authorities, on whom he often relied for the enforcement of his orders. Well known then for his administrative abilities, Éboué was asked to pacify the restless populations of Kouango, a task he did brilliantly in 1914-1917. Under local custom, he took for his companion a chief’s relative, who bore him a second son, Robert Max Éboué, in 1919. In recognition of his successful efforts in the pacification of his area, the colonial authorities promoted him to full third class administrator in 1917. As a mature civil servant, Éboué began seriously questioning the validity of the assimilation policy for Africans and shifted emphasis in his area from rubber collection to the cultivation of food and cash crops such as peanuts and cotton. He was convinced, however, that, if the colony and the Africans were to advance economically, forced labor and taxes were a necessity, as long as the Africans were treated humanely and the market price of their crops (such as cotton) was fair. In 1917-1918, Éboué went on vacation to Paris and Cayenne but returned once again to Oubangui-Chari in 1919 as a full administrator at Bambari and continued his economic emphasis on peanuts, cassava, rice, sesame, and other crops; he encouraged the prospecting of mineral resources and opened a major road between Bambari and Bangui, the colonial capital. He created health-care centers and spearheaded the eradication of epidemic diseases (sleeping sickness, cerebrospinal meningitis, malaria, yellow fever, and cholera), an effort that made him a recipient of the Médaille des Épidémies from the authorities in 1919, the same year in which he was promoted to administrator second class. His first serious administrative troubles began there, when Governor-General Augagneur accused him of abusing the indigenat, an accusation that carried with it a two-week jail term and a fine, without trial. Éboué subsequently cleared his name but decided to request a leave and went to Cayenne, where he married Eugénie Telles in 1922 and became a Freemason, as was customary among the educated and the wealthy of the islands (who did not necessarily repudiate Catholicism).

It would appear, however, that Oubangui-Chari was tied to Éboué’s fate, for, in 1923, the colonial office asked him to return to the territory, after promoting him to administrator first class of Bas Mbomou. There he introduced a systematic cultivation of cotton, which reached a record amount of five hundred tons in 1926. Although he and Eugénie were happily married and had a daughter (Ginette), born in 1923, and a son (Charles Eboué), born in 1924, Éboué’s intermittent earaches and bouts of pulmonary congestion preoccupied the family. The young administrator, however, was determined to fulfill his administrative duties competently, regardless of his health, with an eye to an important promotion, which came in 1930 when he was appointed administrator in chief after a brief period of service at Fort Sibut in Kemo-Gribingui, Ouaka, and Bambari. Exhausted and interested in maintaining contact with important personalities in France, Éboué left for Paris on vacation on March 31, 1931.

By 1932, indications were that Éboué’s career would shift from Africa (which he called “the land of his ancestors”) to the Antilles, his birthplace. His Senegalese friend, Blaise Diagne, who served as the undersecretary of state for colonies, used his influence to have Éboué appointed secretary-general of Martinique, a position he gladly assumed on February 23, 1932. As secretary-general, Éboué had a wide range of executive responsibilities within the governor’s domain. On July 15, 1932, Éboué was named acting governor of Martinique. This appointment brought him a great sense of pride and vindicated his abilities. Unfortunately, he had no sooner been appointed than he had to step down on August 23, when the governor returned from the metropolis. He became interim governor of Martinique on June 4, 1933, the same year that he published his book Les Peuples de l’Oubangui-Chari, as he continued to aspire to be an administrator-scholar. His position as governor was short-lived, as it lasted only until April 19, 1934. He was reassigned to Africa but to French Sudan (now Mali), first as secretary-general (May 23, 1934) and then as acting governor (December 12, 1934, to November 20, 1935). Éboué was disappointed with this assignment because of his unfamiliarity with the location and became disillusioned when he was not appointed permanent governor.

While in French Sudan, Éboué experienced racism from white administrators and encountered problems with the Muslim populations and the nomads, with whom he had never dealt before, in his constant effort to submit them to colonial rule and to forced labor and taxation. He still maintained his belief that some attention should be paid to African local authorities if colonization were to succeed. His assignment in French Sudan was short-lived also. The colonial office reassigned him to Martinique as interim governor on September 29, 1936, and then as governor third class on November 25, 1936. This assignment was a great honor for him, but he encountered racism there too and was a victim of local politics, worsened by a strike of dockworkers and masons. He fought without success the introduction of a forty-hour work week, the adoption of paid vacation for civil servants, and the acceptance of the principle of collective bargaining. Removed as governor in July, 1938, Éboué was asked to go to Chad as governor second class. Although this was a promotion in rank, Éboué was quite unhappy with the assignment because of the territory’s backwardness and the fact that all colonial officers viewed a posting to Chad as a de facto demotion. It was this posting, however, that would finally bring him the most fame. As soon as he arrived at Fort-Lamy (now N’Djamena), the capital of Chad, on January 24, 1939, he began to apply his principles of colonization, which included rapid improvement of communication and transportation networks, cultivation of cash and food crops, preservation of local authorities, enforcement of work laws and taxation, and administrative decentralization.

Unfortunately, the fall of France to Nazi Germany in June, 1940, dashed all hopes of implementing his grand colonial designs. In a courageous stand, he refused to follow orders from the Vichy government and rallied Chad to General Charles de Gaulle in August, 1940, and urged the other African colonies to follow suit. His effort was so successful in Africa and so gratifying to de Gaulle that on November 12, 1940, the latter named Éboué provisional governor-general of French Equatorial Africa. Éboué was totally surprised and happy with his new appointment, which became a permanent one on July 15, 1941. That August, during a visit to French West and Equatorial Africa, de Gaulle bestowed on Éboué the Croix de la Compagne de la Libération in recognition of his war effort in Equatorial Africa on behalf of the French Resistance.

As a permanent governor-general, Éboué now had the opportunity to implement his colonial philosophy, which became known as la nouvelle politique africaine. De Gaulle listened to him and urged the acceptance of Éboué’s colonial policies. To show his trust and gratitude to Éboué, de Gaulle held in Brazzaville the Governors’ Conference of January, 1944. De Gaulle made an emotional speech at the soccer stadium, praising Éboué as one of the most able governors-general and one of the greatest patriots France had ever seen. With his reputation high in French colonial circles, Éboué’s philosophy triumphed after Brazzaville, eventually leading to the abolition of the indigenat and to the establishment of special schools and the communes he had advocated. Happy but tired and wishing to see Egypt and the Middle East, Éboué left Chad on March 18, 1944, on a three-month vacation with his family. While in Cairo, he fell sick from pneumonia. Doctors administered to him the most modern medicine then available. Although everyone expected him to recover quickly, Éboué’s health suddenly deteriorated. He died in the hospital on May 17. He was buried two days later in Egypt after funeral ceremonies at the Catholic Church of Saint Mark de Choubrah. De Gaulle was unable to attend the funeral but sent a message, and René Pleven, the national commissioner for economy, finances, and colonies in the Comité National Français (and de Gaulle’s number one man), gave the eulogy and promised that a proper burial for the governor would be found after the war. Several British and French governors also attended the ceremonies. Finally, in 1949, Éboué’s coffin was shipped to France, and, with full honors, it was placed in the Panthéon on May 20, 1949. Thus ended prematurely the life and career of one of the most prominent black civil servants of the French colonial empire.

Significance

Éboué’s ambition in life was to advance to the highest rank of the colonial civil service ladder. As a black man, he never overlooked the problems that lay ahead of him. Through sheer determination, favorable circumstances beyond his control (which some would call luck), his friendships, the crucial connections he had forged in the colonial office in France and overseas, and his own administrative talent, Éboué achieved his goal in life in 1941 when he became governor-general of French Equatorial Africa. Unfortunately, his somewhat premature death at the age of fifty-nine prevented him from implementing to the fullest extent his colonial philosophy. A Stoic and Pythagorean, a Freemason, and a man of great respect for human values and human dignity, Éboué faced his administrative tasks with the vision of a better France and a better colonial empire for all, where fairness, brotherhood, and justice would be the guiding principles.

Throughout his career and after his death, Éboué continued to be a symbol of success and an inspiration for all black people within the French Empire. In Africa, however, his task was made more difficult because he had to enforce the colonial policies that were designed to coerce the Africans to become part of the empire through the indigenat, forced labor, taxation, and the abandonment of their nationalistic aspirations. From this perspective, therefore, he was seen not only as a black “foreigner” from the Antilles but also as a colonial administrator and even as an oppressor masked in a black skin. Perceptive Africans were able to view him also in a more positive role as one who fought colonial abuses, who created schools and hospitals, and who encouraged the preservation of certain elements of African tradition, convinced that French assimilation and citizenship for Africans were unrealistic. He preferred association and would have liked to see educated Africans given a special status in the colonial empire that of notables évolués and the establishment of urban and local communes with certain voting and political rights, which would lead, however, not to nationalistic aspirations but to a colorful diversity within a unified French Empire.

Bibliography

Azevedo, Mario. Sara Demographic Instability as a Consequence of French Colonial Policy in Chad (1890-1940). Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1977. Despite the title’s reference to demography, this work discusses all aspects of French colonial policy in Chad and reveals the social, economic, and political environment in which Éboué had to work as an administrator.

Betts, Raymond F. Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890-1914. 1961. New ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. An essential work for any English reader interested in the debate over assimilation and association, of which Éboué chose the latter, at least insofar as the Africans were concerned. This edition includes a new preface.

La Roche, Jean de. Le Gouverneur Général Félix Éboué, 1884-1944. Paris: Hachette, 1957. Brian Weinstein calls this work Éboué’s best biography in French but adds that it focuses mostly on his life as a statesman. This biography, written by one of his friends, is sympathetic to the governor but is not as extensive in its sources as Weinstein’s work.

O’Toole, Thomas. The Central African Republic: The Continent’s Hidden Heart. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986. For a better understanding of Éboué’s times and the milieu in which he worked during the first four decades of the twentieth century, O’Toole’s book constitutes an important source of information and historical interpretation.

Weinstein, Brian. Éboué. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. This is the most complete and objectively written biography of Éboué. Weinstein, a professor of political science at Howard University at the time he wrote it, made extensive use of primary sources, written and oral, on the governor, making the work a true study of Éboué’s life and times. Highly recommended.