Biafras of the Mind: French Postcolonial Humanitarianism in Global Conceptual History

Abstract

Abstract After a long period of neglect, historians have rediscovered the humanitarian crisis in the famine-ridden secessionist Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). The recent historiography is spurred by the growing interest in the histories of human rights and humanitarianism. While critical of narratives about the Biafran crisis as a “myth of origins” of Doctors Without Borders, the historiography of Biafra, particularly on the French case, remains calibrated to this perspective: “doing history backwards,” it projects a genealogy of the humanitarianism of the present into the past. To provide a different reading, this article proposes to historicize the Biafran moment more thoroughly through an expanded form of global conceptual history that combines textual and visual analysis with a focus on multiple temporalities. As the article aims to show, such a “history in the plural” based on the work of German conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck is particularly promising for dealing with the complex temporalities that global historical research requires. Global conceptual history can help historians move beyond stories of the origins of “our present” and at the same time develop a better understanding of the contemporary era’s specific conditions.