Vichy in the Tropics: Petain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina44 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–44 Yaël Simpson Fletcher Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–44. By Eric T. Jennings. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Since the publication of Robert Paxton’s Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–44 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), Vichy has not simply been a story of defeat and occupation, of resistance and collaboration, but a crucial period in the political development of twentieth-century France. Marshal Pétain’s “National Revolution,” an amalgam of neoconservative, traditionalist, and fascist concepts, aimed to restructure society along authoritarian, patriarchal, and corporatist lines. In Vichy in the Tropics, Eric Jennings focuses on the overlooked colonial dimension of this project. He argues that a vision of a rejuvenated empire, with colonies and metropole working as one in the furtherance of a “greater” France, was central to Vichy ideology. Drawing on Raymond Bett’s and Alice Conklin’s rethinking of French republican ideas of “association” and “assimilation,” Jennings uncovers the genealogy of Vichy nativist and racial policy in the empire. He goes on to analyze the experiences of metropolitan officials determined to apply the National Revolution in the empire and colonial authorities enthusiastic in their appropriation of the Vichy slogan “Travail, Famille, Patrie.” Vichy in the Tropics is clearly written and elegantly structured, based on extensive research in diplomatic and colonial archives, and makes astute use of interviews and photographs. Inspired by Gwendolyn Wright’s comparative study of colonial urbanism, Jennings investigates Vichy strategies on the ground in three separate colonial sites: Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina. Considering the isolation of the widely scattered Vichy colonial authorities, Jennings argues that the form taken by the National Revolution depended very much on individual interpretations and local conditions. He nevertheless finds similarities in visions of a “restored” authoritarian and hierarchical order, cooptation of elites, and the severity of repression. Significantly, local nationalists also adapted Vichy rhetoric of tradition, authenticity, and self-reliance in similar ways. Going beyond case studies, Jennings illuminates issues of interest to scholars of Vichy and the colonies. The question of why so much of the French colonial empire supported Vichy, rather than rallying to the Free French and the Allies, is posed particularly sharply by the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. According to Jennings, hostility towards Britain, the longtime competitor for control of the island, and respect for Pétain overcame the republican loyalties of colonial officials. Notions of a “return” to pre-colonial forms of rule, treating the Merina monarch as the local equivalent to Pétain, and legitimizing forced labor as an immutable tradition effectively “creolized” (53) Vichy colonialism. Making reference to Albert Memmi’s insights into the relationship between colonizer and colonized, Jennings concludes that the extremes of Vichy discrimination and repression, on the one hand, and valorization of Malagasy tradition, on the other, proved a highly combustible mixture for Malagasy nationalists. Like other “anciennes colonies” in the Caribbean, Guadeloupe had been a slave colony. The island’s population shared French citizenship and culture with the metropole, but continued social and institutional discrimination meant that the white and mixed-race elite monopolized political power. Vichy’s attempt at recolonization, with widespread disenfranchisement and the imposition of metropolitan regulations, such as restrictions on women’s work in an environment of labor shortage, exposed the brutal and sometimes absurd underpinnings of the National Revolution. Jennings explains how officials invented local traditions and planned festivities which would foster identification with and inspire sacrifices for France, in a concerted effort to mobilize the population for “a vast imperial civil war” (109). But poverty, racism, and the autarkic and autocratic rule of Governor Sorin, backed by Admiral Robert, drove many Guadeloupeans into the Antillean resistance. A geographical construct bringing together the kingdoms of Cambodia, Cochin China, Annam, Laos,and Tonkin, French Indochina imposed an authoritarian colonial state on an already hierarchical and exploitative pre-colonial order. Departing from the conventional emphasis on the historic break brought about by Japanese occupation, Jennings argues that the Vichy administration made a significant impact on Indochina between 1940 and...