Est-ce que les Européens ils se pensaient plus forts que les Africains au 19ème siècle ou pas ?
19th century

While 19th-century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism, leading to the ethnic nationalist discourse that identified the "race" with the " folk ", leading to such movements as pan-Germanism, pan-Turkism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought to be the consequence of historical conquests and social conflicts. Michel Foucault traced the genealogy of modern racism to this medieval "historical and political discourse of race struggle". According to him, it divided itself in the 19th century according to two rival lines: on one hand, it was incorporated by racists, biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race", and they also transformed this popular discourse into a " state racism " (e.g., Nazism). On the other hand, Marxism also seized this discourse founded on the assumption of a political struggle that provided the real engine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. Thus, Marxists transformed the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of " class struggle ", defined by socially structured positions: capitalist or proletarian. In The Will to Knowledge (1976), Foucault analyzed another opponent of the "race struggle" discourse: Sigmund Freud 's psychoanalysis, which opposed the concept of "blood heredity ", prevalent in the 19th century racist discourse.

Authors such as Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, have said that the racist ideology (popular racism) which developed at the end of the 19th century helped legitimize the imperialist conquests of foreign territories and the atrocities that sometimes accompanied them (such as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904–1907 or the Armenian genocide of 1915–1917). Rudyard Kipling 's poem, The White Man's Burden (1899), is one of the more famous illustrations of the belief in the inherent superiority of the European culture over the rest of the world, though it is also thought to be a satirical appraisal of such imperialism. Racist ideology thus helped legitimize the conquest and incorporation of foreign territories into an empire, which were regarded as a humanitarian obligation partially as a result of these racist beliefs.

However, during the 19th century, Western European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of the Arab slave trade in Africa, as well as in the suppression of the slave trade in West Africa. Some Europeans during the time period objected to injustices that occurred in some colonies and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the Hottentot Venus was displayed in England in the beginning of the 19th century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to the exhibition. The same year that Kipling published his poem, Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness (1899), a clear criticism of the Congo Free State, which was owned by Leopold II of Belgium.

Examples of racial theories used include the creation of the Hamitic theory during the European exploration of Africa. The term Hamite was applied to different populations within North Africa, mainly comprising Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Berbers, and the ancient Egyptians. Hamites were regarded as Caucasoid peoples who probably originated in either Arabia or Asia on the basis of their cultural, physical and linguistic similarities with the peoples of those areas. Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized than Sub-Saharan Africans, and more akin to themselves and Semitic peoples. In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was, in fact, considered one of the branches of the Caucasian race, along with the Indo-Europeans, Semites, and the Mediterraneans.

However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have failed as rulers, which was usually ascribed to interbreeding with Negroes. In the mid-20th century, the German scholar Carl Meinhof (1857–1944) claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races. The Hottentots (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races—both being termed nowadays as Khoisan peoples.

In the United States in the early 19th century, the American Colonization Society was established as the primary vehicle for proposals to return black Americans to greater freedom and equality in Africa. The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives with its founder Henry Clay stating that "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Racism spread throughout the New World in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Whitecapping, which started in Indiana in the late 19th century, soon spread throughout all of North America, causing many African laborers to flee from the land they worked on. In the US, during the 1860s, racist posters were used during election campaigns. In one of these racist posters (see above), a black man is depicted lounging idly in the foreground as one white man ploughs his field and another chops wood. Accompanying labels are: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread", and "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes." The black man wonders, "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations." Above in a cloud is an image of the "Freedman's Bureau! Negro Estimate of Freedom!" The bureau is pictured as a large domed building resembling the U.S. Capitol and is inscribed "Freedom and No Work". Its columns and walls are labeled, "Candy", "Rum, Gin, Whiskey", "Sugar Plums", "Indolence", "White Women", "Apathy", "White Sugar", "Idleness", and so on.

On June 5, 1873, Sir Francis Galton, distinguished English explorer and cousin of Charles Darwin, wrote in a letter to The Times:

My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race... I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.
La colonisation africaine

À la suite de l'abolition de la traite négrière en 1807 et stimulée par l'exploitation économique, le partage de l'Afrique a été officiellement initié lors de la Conférence d'Afrique de l'Ouest à Berlin en 1884-1885. La Conférence de Berlin visait à éviter une guerre entre les puissances européennes en permettant aux pays européens rivaux de diviser le continent africain en colonies nationales. Les Africains n'ont pas été consultés.

Les principales puissances européennes ont revendiqué les zones d'Afrique où elles pouvaient exercer une sphère d'influence. Ces revendications n'étaient pas nécessairement assorties de possessions territoriales substantielles ou de traités pour être légitimes. La puissance européenne qui démontrait son contrôle sur un territoire acceptait le mandat de gouverner cette région en tant que colonie nationale. La nation européenne détenant la revendication développait et tirait profit des intérêts commerciaux de sa colonie sans craindre la concurrence européenne. Avec la revendication coloniale venait l'hypothèse sous-jacente que la puissance européenne exerçant le contrôle utiliserait son mandat pour offrir une protection et assurer le bien-être de ses populations coloniales, cependant, ce principe est resté plus une théorie qu'une réalité. De nombreux cas documentés ont témoigné d'une détérioration des conditions matérielles et morales des Africains autochtones à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle sous le régime colonial européen, au point que l'expérience coloniale pour eux a été décrite comme "l'enfer sur terre".

Au moment de la Conférence de Berlin, l'Afrique abritait un cinquième de la population mondiale sur un quart de la superficie terrestre du monde. Cependant, du point de vue européen, ils divisaient un continent inconnu. Les pays européens avaient établi quelques colonies côtières en Afrique au milieu du XIXe siècle, notamment la Colonie du Cap (Grande-Bretagne), l'Angola (Portugal) et l'Algérie (France), mais jusqu'à la fin du XIXe siècle, l'Europe échangeait principalement avec les États africains libres sans ressentir le besoin d'une possession territoriale. Jusqu'aux années 1880, la majeure partie de l'Afrique restait inexplorée, les cartes occidentales de l'époque montrant généralement des espaces vides pour l'intérieur du continent.

De 1880 à 1914, les puissances européennes ont étendu leur contrôle sur le continent africain, se disputant les terres et les ressources de l'Afrique. La Grande-Bretagne contrôlait diverses possessions coloniales en Afrique de l'Est qui s'étendaient sur toute la longueur du continent africain, de l'Égypte au nord à l'Afrique du Sud au sud. La France a gagné du terrain important en Afrique de l'Ouest, et le Portugal a conservé des colonies en Afrique australe. L'Allemagne, l'Italie et l'Espagne ont établi un petit nombre de colonies à divers endroits sur le continent, notamment l'Afrique de l'Est allemande (Tanganyika) et l'Afrique du Sud-Ouest allemande pour l'Allemagne, l'Érythrée et la Libye pour l'Italie, et les îles Canaries et Rio de Oro en Afrique nord-ouest pour l'Espagne. Enfin, pour le roi Léopold (règne de 1865 à 1909), il y avait la vaste "part de ce grand gâteau africain" connu sous le nom du Congo, qui est devenu son fief personnel. En 1914, presque tout le continent était sous contrôle européen. Le Liberia, qui avait été colonisé par des esclaves américains libérés dans les années 1820, et l'Abyssinie (Éthiopie) en Afrique de l'Est, étaient les derniers États africains indépendants.
### Query ###
Est-ce que les Européens ils se pensaient plus forts que les Africains au 19ème siècle ou pas ?

### Main Text ###
19th century

While 19th-century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism, leading to the ethnic nationalist discourse that identified the "race" with the " folk ", leading to such movements as pan-Germanism, pan-Turkism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought to be the consequence of historical conquests and social conflicts. Michel Foucault traced the genealogy of modern racism to this medieval "historical and political discourse of race struggle". According to him, it divided itself in the 19th century according to two rival lines: on one hand, it was incorporated by racists, biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race", and they also transformed this popular discourse into a " state racism " (e.g., Nazism). On the other hand, Marxism also seized this discourse founded on the assumption of a political struggle that provided the real engine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. Thus, Marxists transformed the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of " class struggle ", defined by socially structured positions: capitalist or proletarian. In The Will to Knowledge (1976), Foucault analyzed another opponent of the "race struggle" discourse: Sigmund Freud 's psychoanalysis, which opposed the concept of "blood heredity ", prevalent in the 19th century racist discourse.

Authors such as Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, have said that the racist ideology (popular racism) which developed at the end of the 19th century helped legitimize the imperialist conquests of foreign territories and the atrocities that sometimes accompanied them (such as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904–1907 or the Armenian genocide of 1915–1917). Rudyard Kipling 's poem, The White Man's Burden (1899), is one of the more famous illustrations of the belief in the inherent superiority of the European culture over the rest of the world, though it is also thought to be a satirical appraisal of such imperialism. Racist ideology thus helped legitimize the conquest and incorporation of foreign territories into an empire, which were regarded as a humanitarian obligation partially as a result of these racist beliefs.

However, during the 19th century, Western European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of the Arab slave trade in Africa, as well as in the suppression of the slave trade in West Africa. Some Europeans during the time period objected to injustices that occurred in some colonies and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the Hottentot Venus was displayed in England in the beginning of the 19th century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to the exhibition. The same year that Kipling published his poem, Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness (1899), a clear criticism of the Congo Free State, which was owned by Leopold II of Belgium.

Examples of racial theories used include the creation of the Hamitic theory during the European exploration of Africa. The term Hamite was applied to different populations within North Africa, mainly comprising Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Berbers, and the ancient Egyptians. Hamites were regarded as Caucasoid peoples who probably originated in either Arabia or Asia on the basis of their cultural, physical and linguistic similarities with the peoples of those areas. Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized than Sub-Saharan Africans, and more akin to themselves and Semitic peoples. In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was, in fact, considered one of the branches of the Caucasian race, along with the Indo-Europeans, Semites, and the Mediterraneans.

However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have failed as rulers, which was usually ascribed to interbreeding with Negroes. In the mid-20th century, the German scholar Carl Meinhof (1857–1944) claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races. The Hottentots (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races—both being termed nowadays as Khoisan peoples.

In the United States in the early 19th century, the American Colonization Society was established as the primary vehicle for proposals to return black Americans to greater freedom and equality in Africa. The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives with its founder Henry Clay stating that "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Racism spread throughout the New World in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Whitecapping, which started in Indiana in the late 19th century, soon spread throughout all of North America, causing many African laborers to flee from the land they worked on. In the US, during the 1860s, racist posters were used during election campaigns. In one of these racist posters (see above), a black man is depicted lounging idly in the foreground as one white man ploughs his field and another chops wood. Accompanying labels are: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread", and "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes." The black man wonders, "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations." Above in a cloud is an image of the "Freedman's Bureau! Negro Estimate of Freedom!" The bureau is pictured as a large domed building resembling the U.S. Capitol and is inscribed "Freedom and No Work". Its columns and walls are labeled, "Candy", "Rum, Gin, Whiskey", "Sugar Plums", "Indolence", "White Women", "Apathy", "White Sugar", "Idleness", and so on.

On June 5, 1873, Sir Francis Galton, distinguished English explorer and cousin of Charles Darwin, wrote in a letter to The Times:

My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race... I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.

### Supplementary Text ###
La colonisation africaine

À la suite de l'abolition de la traite négrière en 1807 et stimulée par l'exploitation économique, le partage de l'Afrique a été officiellement initié lors de la Conférence d'Afrique de l'Ouest à Berlin en 1884-1885. La Conférence de Berlin visait à éviter une guerre entre les puissances européennes en permettant aux pays européens rivaux de diviser le continent africain en colonies nationales. Les Africains n'ont pas été consultés.

Les principales puissances européennes ont revendiqué les zones d'Afrique où elles pouvaient exercer une sphère d'influence. Ces revendications n'étaient pas nécessairement assorties de possessions territoriales substantielles ou de traités pour être légitimes. La puissance européenne qui démontrait son contrôle sur un territoire acceptait le mandat de gouverner cette région en tant que colonie nationale. La nation européenne détenant la revendication développait et tirait profit des intérêts commerciaux de sa colonie sans craindre la concurrence européenne. Avec la revendication coloniale venait l'hypothèse sous-jacente que la puissance européenne exerçant le contrôle utiliserait son mandat pour offrir une protection et assurer le bien-être de ses populations coloniales, cependant, ce principe est resté plus une théorie qu'une réalité. De nombreux cas documentés ont témoigné d'une détérioration des conditions matérielles et morales des Africains autochtones à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle sous le régime colonial européen, au point que l'expérience coloniale pour eux a été décrite comme "l'enfer sur terre".

Au moment de la Conférence de Berlin, l'Afrique abritait un cinquième de la population mondiale sur un quart de la superficie terrestre du monde. Cependant, du point de vue européen, ils divisaient un continent inconnu. Les pays européens avaient établi quelques colonies côtières en Afrique au milieu du XIXe siècle, notamment la Colonie du Cap (Grande-Bretagne), l'Angola (Portugal) et l'Algérie (France), mais jusqu'à la fin du XIXe siècle, l'Europe échangeait principalement avec les États africains libres sans ressentir le besoin d'une possession territoriale. Jusqu'aux années 1880, la majeure partie de l'Afrique restait inexplorée, les cartes occidentales de l'époque montrant généralement des espaces vides pour l'intérieur du continent.

De 1880 à 1914, les puissances européennes ont étendu leur contrôle sur le continent africain, se disputant les terres et les ressources de l'Afrique. La Grande-Bretagne contrôlait diverses possessions coloniales en Afrique de l'Est qui s'étendaient sur toute la longueur du continent africain, de l'Égypte au nord à l'Afrique du Sud au sud. La France a gagné du terrain important en Afrique de l'Ouest, et le Portugal a conservé des colonies en Afrique australe. L'Allemagne, l'Italie et l'Espagne ont établi un petit nombre de colonies à divers endroits sur le continent, notamment l'Afrique de l'Est allemande (Tanganyika) et l'Afrique du Sud-Ouest allemande pour l'Allemagne, l'Érythrée et la Libye pour l'Italie, et les îles Canaries et Rio de Oro en Afrique nord-ouest pour l'Espagne. Enfin, pour le roi Léopold (règne de 1865 à 1909), il y avait la vaste "part de ce grand gâteau africain" connu sous le nom du Congo, qui est devenu son fief personnel. En 1914, presque tout le continent était sous contrôle européen. Le Liberia, qui avait été colonisé par des esclaves américains libérés dans les années 1820, et l'Abyssinie (Éthiopie) en Afrique de l'Est, étaient les derniers États africains indépendants.

### Draft ###

Query: "Est-ce que les Européens ils se pensaient plus forts que les Africains au 19ème siècle ou pas ?"

Translation check: "Did Europeans think they were stronger than Africans in the 19th century or not?" 
→ Casual tone ("ils se pensaient"), seeking confirmation/negation
→ Binary framing but reality more complex

**Initial assessment:** Information retrieval + historical contextualization. Need to address:
- Temporal scope: 19th century ● 
- Geographic scope: Western European colonial powers ●
- Domain: Colonial ideology, racial theory, political economy ●

**Core question parsing:**
"Stronger" = physical? economic? intellectual? political? All above?
"Européens" = which nations? Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal...
"Africains" = sub-Saharan populations? North Africans? Broader African civilizations?

**Historical anchor points:**
- Berlin Conference 1884-1885 ● → formal territorial division
- Abolition of slave trade ~1807 ● → economic shift motivations  
- "Scramble for Africa" 1880s-1914 ● → peak colonial expansion

**Evidence triangulation:**

**Ideological dimension:**
European racial theories → constructed hierarchies
- Hamitic hypothesis ◐ → some Africans (Egyptians, Ethiopians) deemed "superior"
- Sub-Saharan populations positioned as "inferior" ●
- "Civilizing mission" discourse ● → implicit superiority assumption

**Economic dimension:**
Industrial revolution → European economic dominance ●
Colonial extraction → resource exploitation justified by "development" ◐
Trade networks → unequal exchange relationships ●

**Political dimension:**
Berlin Conference → no African consultation ●
Treaty of Berlin → arbitrary borders imposed ●
"Protectorate" vs "conquest" → control mechanisms varied ●

**Contradictory evidence patterns:**
- Humanitarian rhetoric vs brutal colonial practices ⚠
- Abolition of slave trade → some anti-slavery sentiment ●
- Leopold II atrocities vs British "civilizing" claims ⚠

**Physical/military dimension:**
Advanced weaponry → European military superiority ●
Disease resistance → European populations adapted to African climate ◐
Infrastructure → railroads, telegraphs → European administrative control ●

**Synthesis:** 
Binary answer insufficient. Europeans operated on spectrum:
- Official ideology: Hierarchical racial superiority ●
- Economic reality: Exploitative relationships ●  
- Political practice: Arbitrary domination ●
- Social complexity: Internal contradictions ⚠

**Key insight:** "Strength" multidimensional, context-dependent
- Military: Europeans clearly superior ●
- Economic: Europeans dominant ●
- Cultural/intellectual: Complex comparisons ◐
- Political: Europeans controlled African territories ●

**Final position:** Yes, but...
- Europeans constructed racial superiority narratives ●
- Colonial ideology assumed European supremacy ●
- Practical reality confirmed this assumption through control ●
- BUT: Contradictory elements existed (abolition, some humanitarian concerns) ⚠

**Confidence assessment:**
P(Europeans believed themselves superior) ≈ 0.9 ●
P(This was the dominant colonial ideology) ≈ 0.9 ●  
P(Reality was uniformly brutal) ≈ 0.7 ◐ (some exceptions)
P(Africans universally viewed as inferior) ≈ 0.8 ● (Hamitic exception complicates)

**Answer structure:**
1. Affirm superiority belief (ideology + practice)
2. Detail mechanisms (racial theory, economic dominance, political control)  
3. Note contradictions (humanitarian discourse, complex hierarchies)
4. Conclude with qualified yes + historical complexity

### Answer###
Oui, les Européens du 19ème siècle considéraient largement qu'ils étaient supérieurs aux Africains. Cette conviction était profondément ancrée dans l'idéologie raciste de l'époque, qui s'était développée au cours du 19ème siècle et était devenue un pilier de la conquête coloniale.

Les théories raciales occidentales de l'époque plaçaient les Européens au sommet de la hiérarchie raciale présumée. Les peuples considérés comme les plus "civilisés" d'Afrique - notamment les Éthiopiens, Érythréens, Somalis et Berbères - étaient eux-mêmes hiérarchisés : les Européens les jugeaient plus proches d'eux-mêmes et les considéraient comme des peuples caucasoides probablement originaires d'Arabie ou d'Asie. Ces populations étaient néanmoins considérées comme ayant "échoué" dans leur rôle de dirigeants, ce qui était généralement attribué à l'hybridation avec les populations noires.

Cette idéologie de supériorité raciale servait de justification aux conquêtes impérialistes. La Conférence de Berlin de 1884-1885, qui a officiellement lancé le partage de l'Afrique, a procédé sans consulter les Africains. Les puissances européennes revendiquaient les territoires où elles pouvaient exercer une influence, considérant qu'elles avaient le devoir - voire l'obligation humanitaire - de protéger et développer ces populations qu'elles jugeaient "inférieures".

Paradoxalement, cette idéologie coexistaient avec des éléments plus complexes. Pendant cette période, certains Européens s'opposaient aux injustices dans les colonies et militaient en faveur des peuples autochtones. Par exemple, l'Association africaine s'était opposée publiquement à l'exposition de la "Venus hottentote" au début du 19ème siècle. De même, des abolitionnistes avaient joué un rôle dans la suppression de l'esclavage en Afrique occidentale.

Cependant, la réalité pratique de la colonisation a révélé une domination brutale et une détérioration des conditions matérielles et morales des Africains autochtones pour beaucoup.