L'Harmattan

L'Harmattan was founded in 1975 by Robert Ageneau and Denis Pryen, two publishers with roots in the Christian left and Third World activism. Their goal was to publish works dealing with geopolitical relations between the Third World, developed countries, and Africa.

Denis Pryen was born in 1939 in northern France. Robert Ageneau, born in 1938 in Vendée, was editor-in-chief of Spiritus, a missionary magazine. The former is considered the businessman behind the project, while the latter is the intellectual. They set up their bookshop in Paris, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district.

L'Harmattan is based on the experiences of two publishing houses that were then in decline, François Maspero and Présence africaine. The newly created publishing house develops new themes around the evolution of African states, immigration, and the role of Christianity in development issues. L'Harmattan has established a network of relationships with nationalist movements, particularly in El Salvador, Timor, the West Indies, and Western Sahara. Its first publications included books on France's overseas territories, 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the Malagasy revolution, famine in the Sahel, and literature in African languages.

In 2010, Denis Pryen retired and appointed his nephew, Xavier Pryen, to head up the group's operational management. In 2024, the founder of the publishing house filed a lawsuit against his nephew, accusing him of taking control of the group without his knowledge and using its financial resources for his own gain. According to Mediapart, the Paris public prosecutor's office has opened two preliminary investigations into scam, abuse of weakness, and workplace bullying.

The model was initially based on a volunteer network made up of university collection managers, but the company has become more professional over the years. In the beginning, promotion was carried out solely through presentations during the Fête de l'Humanité festival. In order to keep costs down, the company imposed a method known as "ready to print" in the 1980s, requiring authors to comply with the formats required by the publishing house. L'Harmattan recruits employees and initiates a publishing contract with 0% royalties on the first 500 copies. This business model is unique and sometimes criticized: authors are paid only, and poorly, from the 501st copy sold. In 1984, L'Harmattan employed 19 people.

For this small-scale distribution model to work, a large volume of books is required, which has enabled L'Harmattan to grow rapidly and successfully. However, this strategy is disapproved of by Robert Ageneau, who believes that it is detrimental to a qualitative and restrictive approach. Following a court ruling in 1980, Robert Ageneau left the company in 1980 to found his own publishing house, Éditions Karthala.