ABSTRACT
One of the questions concerning the motives that led Europe to subdue Black Africa still remains obscure; that of the cultural systems of representations working behind the ideologies and practices of colonisation. It is often said more or less explicitly that some of the arguments used to legitimate and/or to encourage the process of colonisation were already present at the end of the eighteenth century, notably in the discourse of the Enlightenment and of the abolitionists. Then, moral considerations would have been challenged by political and economic interests. The presence of political and economic interests from the very beginning would have facilitated the transition from one system of thought to the other. All in all, colonisation would have been the logical result of forces at work long before the break-up of Africa and the implementation of colonial policies.
