# Sartre prefaces Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre

Date: 1961

## The fact

In 1961 [Jean-Paul Sartre](/people/jean-paul-sartre)’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre presented the book to a French and world public, a metropolitan amplification of a colonised author’s analysis of colonial violence. Fanon’s agency remains Fanon’s.

## Context

The Algerian war was in its last brutal phase. Maspero’s list and Fanon’s death in December 1961 frame the object. Sharing authorship is refused: preface is preface. Do not treat later film adaptations as this 1961 text.

Shared responsibility is part of Sartre prefaces Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre. Naming Jean-Paul Sartre does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1961-01-01 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

## Evidence and sources

BnF data at https://data.bnf.fr/en/11923581/jean-paul_sartre/ locates the prefatory public of Sartre’s political writings. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Paul-Sartre independently notes anti-colonial essays in this period.

Official or archival record: BnF data — Jean-Paul Sartre (https://data.bnf.fr/en/11923581/jean-paul_sartre/; Bibliothèque nationale de France).

## Significance

Rights-amplification path, modest-to-mid weight, medium confidence. Violence-rhetoric cost is the split row.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Sartre prefaced Fanon’s 1961 book. Not established: that he wrote Fanon’s chapters, or a unique casualty series from the preface. Contribution is recorded as He wrote the 1961 preface. Frantz Fanon authored the book; Maspero published. Complex, not a substitute for Fanon’s agency. The impact note is A metropolitan famous preface amplifying a colonised psychiatrist’s book is an anti-colonial rights path, split from the preface’s violence rhetoric. The dated heading stays Sartre prefaces Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre on 1961-01-01, not a later statue, UNESCO listing, or school film. Printers, unnamed clerks, and later editors may appear in the same file without becoming this instrument. Later competitions, monuments, and adaptations are refused as extra lifetime acts of this person on this date.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Fanon preface rights-amplification is not the violence-rhetoric split. Mixed effects of Sartre prefaces Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre are separate paths.

The attached driver is [protection-of-minority-rights](/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

## People

- Jean-Paul Sartre: https://factrail.ai/people/jean-paul-sartre

## Drivers

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## Sources

- https://data.bnf.fr/en/11923581/jean-paul_sartre/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Paul-Sartre

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/sartre-fanon-preface-1961