In April 1946, Paul Flamand, director of Éditions du Seuil, wrote to the French colonial ministry to request a tonne of paper. The French publishing industry had been severely hit by paper restrictions in the immediate post-war period: 150,000 tonnes were needed to refill stocks which had fallen to a low of 12,000 by 1945. While levels had recovered by 1949, such material consequences of the war were to weigh on French publishing until the mid-1950s. These paper shortages precipitated new forms of diplomacy and self-justification for publishers, as seen in Flamand's letter:

His request deployed colonial rhetoric, appealing to ways in which the ‘results’ of the mission civilisatrice might be transmitted overseas through indigenous writing. The claim depended on a notion of measurable cultural assimilation that continued to characterize the French colonial imaginary following the war, but which came increasingly under pressure in the years leading to the official dissolution of the French empire.

The writer to whom Flamand refers in his letter was the poet and future president of independent Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor. The collection of poetry concerned, Hosties noires, was written during Senghor's imprisonment in two prisoner of war camps in occupied France and was eventually published by Le Seuil in 1948. Its contents evoke the sense of sacrifice and dedication to France experienced by African soldiers who had fought for the Allies in the recent conflict, but also signal a more ambiguous mood and re-evaluation of the colonial relationship. The poem ‘Tyaroye’, for example, draws directly on the bloody events at the Thiaroye military camp, Senegal, in 1944, during which twenty-four tirailleurs sénégalais were killed by French troops following a protest against lack of pay on their return from military service in Europe.