Kristen Stromberg Childers. Seeking Imperialism’s Embrace: National Identity, Decolonization, and Assimilation in the French Caribbean.

Abstract

In Seeking Imperialism’s Embrace: National Identity, Decolonization, and Assimilation in the French Caribbean, Kristen Stromberg Childers responds to a two-pronged question that continues to be debated today in French historical and political studies. Why in 1946 did some French colonies (Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Réunion) turn their backs on the possibility of decolonization and opt instead for the status of département and the project of full French citizenship? Was this a pipe dream? Focusing on Martinique and Guadeloupe, Childers offers three explanations for this choice. First, the abolition of slavery by the Second Republic in 1848: the decision to immediately give full citizenship to ex-slaves undeniably linked them and their descendants to the French republican state. Second, the immediate defeat of France in World War II: the installation of a collaborationist government in Vichy put the Caribbean départements under the authority of overtly racist governors. With the help of white ex-colonists’ families (the békés), they repressed violently any political or economic rebellion by impoverished black Antilleans, reinforcing their attachment to the defeated Republic. Third, the role of the United States in 1944: it openly considered controlling these territories, even as they were claimed as a part of Free France by a still fragile Charles De Gaulle. Various békés were receptive to the American proposal. The same could not be said for those whose color would have left them at the mercy of the white supremacy that reigned in the United States.