French Colonial Administration Research Articles

Durkheim’s Empire: The Concept of Solidarity and Its Colonial Dimension

This article challenges prevailing national interpretations of solidarity by examining its colonial dimensions. Employing the Durkheimian school as a historical lens, I demonstrate how the colonial context during the Third Republic shaped the emergence and application of solidarity as a scientific concept. Informed by colonial ethnographies, solidarity was not merely a sociological self-description within European nations; it also formed part of political agendas beyond Europe. I illustrate how Durkheim’s concept was utilized to enhance scientific understanding of colonized societies, aiding French colonial administrators in promoting developmentalist reforms. As national models extended internationally, solidarity evolved from social cohesion to economic integration within the international legal order. This progression toward modern solidarity—and the injustices it entailed—appeared inevitable, masking political struggles for self-determination. By critically recontextualizing solidarity, this analysis contributes to contemporary political theory debates, demonstrating its application in supporting an inclusive legal-economic agenda while failing to systematically confront colonial injustices.

“Islam” and “Muslimisme” in the official discourse and categorical apparatus of the French authorities in the 1920s

Throughout history, France and the Muslim world have been connected in various ways. Their interactions have ranged from constructive collaboration to colonial (or semi-colonial) domination and mutual animosity. In this article, the author seeks to examine the nuances of the discursive mobilisation and contextualisation of terms such as “Islam” and “Muslimisme” within the public and secret documents of French diplomacy and colonial administration during the 1920s. He attempts to address the following questions: What was the terminological and semantic conflict surrounding the aforementioned concepts? What were the objectives of the French officials in articulating one or another aspect of “Islam” and “Muslimisme”? Contemporary neocolonialism and a necessity to study its historical genesis and forms determine relevance of the article. The author makes use of insufficiently researched archival and published material. This, in conjunction with the nature of the research question, provides the rationale behind the originality of the analysis presented in the essay. He employs the methodology of the “history of concepts” and comparative-historical analysis to examine the intricate interrelationship between the discursive mobilisation of “Islam” and “Muslimisme”, on the one hand, and the practical policies of Paris, on the other. The author draws on a range of sources to inform his analysis, including French diplomatic documents, the notes and reports of Marshal Hubert Lyautey, books and pamphlets by various French experts and public figures, and material from the French and Algerian press. He concludes that the semantic colouring of “Islam” and “Muslimisme” in the French official discourse of the 1920s was not homogeneous. This perception included a sense of superiority close to Orientalism, a perception of the backwardness of “Islamic civilization” and its incompatibility with the Western socio-political order, and a perception of “Islam” as a potential danger, especially if it was combined with other religious (pan-Islamism) and/or socio-political challenges (pan-Turkism, Bolshevism). Concurrently, the Third Republic’s authorities frequently regarded Islam as a means of securing Muslim allegiance and enhancing France’s “soft power”.

The Yen Bay Rebellion (1930) and internal security policy in French Indochina

The article contents an analysis of the French experience of anti-colonial struggle in the era of Interbellum in the Indochina region. Special attention is devoted to the degree and speed of the response of the French colonial administration and the metropolis to the events taking place. The article presents the characteristics of French military thought regarding the specifics of conducting combat operations against the rebels using aviation and native units. Attention is focused on the problem of the loyalty of the Vietnamese people, their attitude to French rule. The main fears of the French in connection with the growth of Vietnamese national identity as a threat to the colonial order are revealed. The importance of the events in Yen Bai is emphasized from the point of view of further measures by Paris to ensure internal security in the Indochina region. The changes in the national composition of the French colonial army in Indochina are shown. The uprising affected not only the army, but also the political police of France – «Sûreté». The work shows that the uprising did not receive universal support from the local population. The reaction of a part of French society to the events in Yen Bai is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the personality of Pierre Pasquier, Governor-General of Indochina, who personified the conservative part of the French colonial bureaucracy, whose attitude towards local peoples in the Interbellum era rather complicated relations between the metropolis and dependent territories. On the other hand, attention is drawn to the impact of the events in Yen Bai on changes in both the composition and leadership of the driving political force of the revolutionary struggle in Indochina. It was at this time that the National Party of Vietnam lost its leading position in the vanguard of the anti-colonial struggle to the Communist Party of Indochina.

L’espace public à Algér : le désintérêt privé (beylick) comme produit du contrôle public

Public spaces in Algeria are characterized by the strong lack of interest among people who rely entirely on public authority. Not any tendency here to make of it a common good. The purpose of the paper is to exhibit the extent of popular indifference from in situ observations in Algiers and to explain this attitude through historical analysis. Indeed, the collective imaginary and practices have not always been insensitive to public spaces. On the contrary, in traditional rural society, public spaces were perceived as a continuity of domestic space. The peasant was obliged to take charge of its maintenance as well as for his home, his intimate space. To understand the later behavioural evolution, we must refer to the Ottoman and colonial domination processes. Each period had its own way of considering public spaces, but the urban management systems have always been based on a discrimination policy against natives and a strict control of the public spaces to the point of making them appear as the State property in the collective mentality. This perception of a grabbing of public spaces by the Turkish governor (Beylik) and later by the French colonial administration (for security reasons) has led amongst city dwellers to a feeling of exclusion and a disaffection that still characterize their attitude today.

French Colonial Policies in West Africa: Power Dynamics, Cultural Impositions and Economic Legacies

The complex dynamics of French colonial policies in West Africa during European imperialism played a crucial role in streamlining administrative procedures and consolidating control over the indigenous African population. This colonial framework not only imposed a distinct sense of identity on African communities but also created deep stratification within these societies. Implementing the direct rule system, an essential aspect of French colonial administration, facilitated imposing laws and regulations that often marginalized traditional authority structures. As a result, a symbiotic relationship emerged between the African colonies and France, with the former serving as essential suppliers of resources crucial for sustaining France's growing industrial enterprises. This paper delves into the intricate nuances of the French colonial policies and their enduring impact on West Africa. By critically examining the assimilation and association policies, the study elucidates the power dynamics, cultural impositions, and economic implications that characterized the colonial experience of French colonies in West Africa. Unpacking the complexities of the colonial governance framework highlights the systemic disparities and cultural alienation perpetuated by the French colonial apparatus, underscoring the persistent socio-economic challenges and cultural subjugation that continue to shape the contemporary West African landscape. By exploring historical injustices and postcolonial complexities, the study emphasizes the urgent need for a holistic and inclusive approach to postcolonial development, advocating for preserving cultural heritage and promoting equitable socio-economic progress within the region.

The Vietnamese Migrant Community in Laos: Social Stratification and Diversity (1893–1945)

Abstract As Vietnam and Laos share extensive and contiguous borders, there is a long history of Vietnamese migrations into Laos. From 1893 to 1945, the French colonial administration of Indochina brought many Vietnamese people to Laos, who later formed a large Vietnamese community there. Given Laos's small population, the French colonial government had to rely on the Vietnamese labor force to build a new colonial regime and infrastructure and exploit its natural resources. Most of these immigrants came from the more populated areas in Tonkin and Annam. They worked in various roles such as civil servants, soldiers, workers, or coolies depending on the needs of the French colonial government and business. While qualified civil servants, including interpreters, secretaries, teachers, nurses, and soldiers, earned better salaries and welfare, free workers and coolies were subject to low social status and hard working conditions. This article describes how the colonial system of wages and occupations contributed to social stratification and diversity within the Vietnamese migrant community and shaped migrants’ diverse responses to French colonial rule.

Freedom of movement versus freedom of work? Coping with the mobility of indigenous workers in a palm oil concession in French Congo (1910-1940)

ABSTRACT In colonial French Congo, one of the main challenges for labor relations was the need to reconcile contradictory efforts to promote the mobility of native workers while also stabilizing (or immobilizing) the workforce. As the interests of colonial employers and officials overlapped and merged, so did the status of indigenous workers evolve according to how administrative and economic leaders categorized indigenous work. Indigenous workers were therefore progressively categorized as migrant workers, deserters or vagrants. The political instruments which were supposed to ensure the circulation of migrant workers particularly (the laissez-passer, worker logbooks, orders regulating the flow of the workforce within the colony, etc.) were perversely used to constrain worker movement. Drawing on the archives of the French colonial administration and the private archives of the Compagnie Française du Haut-Congo, this article tries to grasp the relation between freedom and (im)mobility in the context of a colonial concession. In that context, colonial leaders sought to control of mobility for purposes relating to the construction of a local labor market, the consolidation of governmental rationality and the stabilization of colonial order.

Jessica Namakkal. Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India.

Jessica Namakkal’s book, Unsettling Utopia, is a fascinating study of how the “messiness of colonialism” can be demonstrated in the complex realities of decolonized nations like India. Namakkal focusses on Pondicherry and its surrounding areas, as an example of how different colonial empires (Pondicherry was a French colony, while India was largely a British colony) and their policies created complex and often contradictory webs of bureaucracy, paperwork, laws, borders, and cultures. This complex legacy continues today, where past and present live in tenuous coexistence and differences often flare into conflict. The first section of the book, titled “Making” describes how the interaction between French and British colonial regimes in the context of Pondicherry led to convoluted borders, which, depending on one’s point of view, can be seen as either shutting in or shutting out the other. As a consequence of these borders and as a result of France’s aim of showcasing her possessions in India as “model colonies” in contrast to the increasing resistance in the rest of India to British rule, Pondicherry became a haven for exiles from British India. The most famous of these was Sri Aurobindo, who, as a British Indian subject with an elite education, could easily mingle with French colonial administrators while garnering the local population’s support for his mission. In consequence, Aurobindo went on to attract a number of European and American devotees to his ashram, which he established along with his foremost disciple, Mira Alfassa, a Frenchwoman who would come to be known as “The Mother,” and become Aurobindo’s successor.

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Documenting Interpersonal Conflict in Senegal during the First Quarter the Twentieth Century

In the early twentieth century, in countries of former French West Africa, new adjudicatory bodies, the so-called “native courts,” were created and managed by the French colonial administration to handle disputes between native people. The monitoring of court activity generated high-frequency litigation data that provide a unique opportunity to document interpersonal conflict in a context of colonial rule undergoing rapid transformation. This paper has three objectives: (i) to describe the institutional framework that gave rise to the case registers, “Les États Récapitulatifs,” upon which this research is based; (ii) to detail our method for compiling time series of cases adjudicated by the native courts of Senegal; (iii) to describe certain time trends in the dynamics of cases adjudicated by these courts. We conclude by discussing how this database could be used to better understand the economic and political roots of interpersonal conflict.

From islands to territorial empire: The French colonial administration at Gorée and the environmental causes of continental expansion after the Seven Years War

This article explores the relationship between islands and the continental shore through the lens of the French colonial administration at Gorée after the Seven Years War. In this period, the French Ministry of the Marine deliberately sought to check French territorial expansion across the globe in order to favor France’s lucrative plantation complex in the Caribbean. As part of this official policy, Gorée was deemed critical for the protection of the French slave trade, but not seen as a point of departure for colonial empire on the African continent. Unreliable provisioning from the metropole, labor shortages, and environmental conditions at Gorée, however, pushed local French administrators to rely on the African mainland for resources, nourishing expansionist ambitions in the process. Focusing on the environmental, geo-political, and commercial dimensions of island-continental interaction at Gorée and the Senegambia’s coast, this article brings into view unaddressed tensions among official French imperial policy, colonial provisioning, and territorial expansion.

“How can Eve in the bible be born from a man when biologically a man is born from woman?” Tracing feminist struggles in the colonial period and 1980s Yewwu-Yewwi feminist movement in Senegal

abstract At the beginning of the 20th century in Casamance, southern Senegal, a young woman with healing powers named Alandisso Bassene opened a shrine, and would quickly amass a following of both men and women. A clash with missionaries and French colonial administration would result in ‘the most acclaimed witch doctor’ being imprisoned for the next 15 years in 1919. Six decades later, in 1984, a new radical feminist movement in Senegal, Yewwu-Yewwi for Women’s Liberation, emerged and challenged the hierarchical relationship between men and women, denouncing patriarchy, with a brand of feminism that echoed global feminism. In an interview with the state newspaper Le Soleil in 1986, Marie Angélique Savane, the leader of Yewwu-Yewwi, described feminism as the awareness of inequality of the sexes and denouncing injustice against women despite them ‘carrying humanity’ and being a dynamic and progressive force (Fall 1986a). This article studies the historical narratives of mediumship, priestesses, shrines and their followers in southern Senegal during the colonial period, where power circulates, and the feminist thought of Yewwu-Yewwi, where the lack of power held by women is addressed in the language of equality and rights.

In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism by J. P. Daughton (review).

Reviewed by: In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism by J. P. Daughton Friedrich N. Ammermann (bio) In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism By J. P. Daughton. New York: W.W. Norton, 2021. Pp. 384. This is a book about colonial violence. J. P. Daughton tells the story of the Congo-Océan Railway, the construction of which cost between 20,000 to 60,000 lives and left thousands more laborers undernourished, sick, and traumatized. The 500 km railway, connecting Brazzaville with the Atlantic port Pointe-Noire (both in present-day Republic of the Congo), first envisioned in the 1880s, was built between 1921 and 1934. Although officially relying on volunteers, the construction sites became known as exceptionally violent workplaces both in French Equatorial Africa and the imperial center, France. How is it possible then, Daughton asks, that despite the knowledge of horrendous working conditions, the project was carried out over thirteen years—and after the completion of the railway, the suffering and deaths of African laborers were completely forgotten about in France? Daughton sets out to bring justice to this neglected human suffering on the Congo-Océan Railway and embeds his story of the railway in a larger history of French colonial violence in equatorial Africa. This is therefore not your classic railway history focusing on heroic surveying and brilliant engineering, or reporting locomotive classes, engine miles run, and amounts of goods transported (although interested readers can find some of that information in Chapter 11). Daughton unerringly addresses a painful gap in most colonial railway accounts: the suffering of the (mostly) African laborers that moved incredible amounts of earth, cleared bushes, dug tunnels, and laid the tracks. Tragically, those laborers left very few traces for historians to reconstruct their lives and work. Daughton has an exceptional body of sources at hand—created by the Société de Construction des Batignolles and the French administration—which he masterfully uses not only to demonstrate the pain inflicted on laborers, but also to reinstate their agency. Given the general lack of sources on African workers on such construction sites, In the Forest of No Joy is a must read for anyone interested in colonial infrastructure projects. Daughton emphasizes the forceful recruitment of "volunteers," their arduous journeys to the construction sites, and the working conditions there. A key chapter investigates the particularly difficult conditions in the eponymous "forest without joy," the Mayombe (Chapter 5). Daughton does not shy away from recounting anecdotes of shocking atrocities and contrasts them in later chapters with the local colonial administration's attempts—personified by Governor-General Raphaël Antonetti—to justify, downplay, and deny the violence committed on the construction sites. Antonetti, as Daughton argues, was driven by a strong belief in bureaucratic measures to bring "humanity" and progress into the [End Page 1187] colony. In his "circular logic," Antonetti upheld that the violence committed on the Congo-Océan Railway would eventually lead to a reduction of violence in the colony. Antonetti's belief in bureaucracy was shared in imperial Paris, and his strategy of deflecting criticism to "individual rogues," coupled with his superior institutional knowledge and vigor, successfully secured support for the railway throughout its construction period. In his final chapter, Daughton seeks to explain the particular brutality and high death rates on the Congo-Océan Railway. He contends that overwhelming racism on different levels met with the devastating hubris of the French colonial administration, which commenced railway construction without even having surveyed the territory properly. Ultimately, the high death rates were a sign of the French inability to keep its workforce alive, and hence a sign of imperial weakness. The results of this failure were then justified as either negligible or unavoidable in a project of such magnitude. However, if violence inflicted by humans on humans is the main concern of this book, one wonders why the author is not drawing more from the existing literature about human cruelty. The lack of engagement with other literature is perhaps more broadly the only shortcoming of this book for academic readers, as there...

Beyond Resistance

Abstract Drawing on oral traditions and archival materials, this article examines the validity of claims made by the French colonial physicians and administrators that the African patients’ mistrust of and resistance to biomedicine had to do with their superstition, apathy, and ignorance, as well as with the pressure exercised upon them by healers, marabouts, and midwives. It argues that the African patients’ therapeutic choices were rational and were informed by their cultural history.

The policy of confessional particularism of the French authorities in Mandatory Syria in 1920–1946

The paper discusses the confessional principles of the territorial structure of Syria during its stay in the status of a French mandated territory. The authors prefaced their analysis with a description of the process of establishing a French colonial administration in Syria, in particular, the conclusion of the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement on the division of the Middle East and, in particular, Greater Syria, into spheres of influence that determined the modern borders of the Middle Eastern states. The instrumental role of confessional differences in the struggle of the French authorities in Syria with the popular idea of pan-Arabism in the region is shown. Predominantly according to the confessional principle, the territory of Syria was fragmented by the French into 5 regions-states, which, firstly, determined the subsequent loss of control by Damascus over Lebanon and the Alexandretta Sanjak, and secondly, laid the foundation for the emergence of separatist tendencies and future domestic instability. However, as the authors of the paper show in the short term, the policy of the French imperialists failed. Paris failed to use Christians to put down the Druze and Sunni uprisings. However, after the French left the territory of Syria, there was a conflict between large ethno-confessional groups (Sunnis, Alawites and Druzes), the consequences of which were especially sharply exposed already in the 2010s.

Enduring Epidemic: Aesthetic Aftershocks of the 1914 Plague and the Segregation of Dakar

AbstractIn 1914, an epidemic of bubonic plague ravaged colonial Dakar. The panicked French colonial administration blamed the native population and evicted indigenous Africans from the city center before burning their homes. The Dakarois fought back through a general strike, political maneuvering, and, finally, by taking to the streets. Out of this year of disease, politics, racism, and resistance came the new, segregated neighborhood of Médina, which was created to house the displaced African population of Dakar. Over the twentieth century, as Dakar swelled into a metropolis around it, Médina was a unique space in the Senegalese capital—a hotbed of cultural creativity, a crossroads for waves of migrants, and a potent and enduring contrast with the nearby downtown, known as the Plateau. This article explores the ways in which the plague of 1914 reshaped Dakar and left a lasting impression on a century of Senegalese cultural production.

Imaginative links: Islam and dreams of a Saharan French empire

ABSTRACT French colonial expansion across North and West Africa brought contact with varied political and religious groups, particularly along the Saharan rim and in the western Sahel. Numerous French metropolitan politicians and colonial administrators alike saw the Sahara as a great connecting medium, a new-age mare nostrum that would serve as the centerpiece of an expansive overseas empire. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Xavier Coppolani and Robert Arnaud (or Randau) served as the leaders working across this seemingly impassable divide to invent a political, demographic, religious, and vividly Romantic homogeneity for the area and its people, one based almost entirely in the power of Sufi Islam. Such unifying concepts built on older Saharan traditions of politico-religious linkage while thriving in a moment of changing French metropolitan colonial theory. Ultimately beset on all sides by local, metropolitan, and imperial resistance, these attempts failed over time as they hardened stereotypes and overlooked important realities of human connection throughout the region. The complex and contradictory forces involved in the joining of disparate social and political entities in the Sahara offer substantial insight into the reality of colonial expansion and political formation.

From ʾAlfiyya to Berlitz: modernising Arabic language pedagogy in protectorate-era Morocco

ABSTRACT It is often assumed that colonial administrators across North Africa were involved, explicitly or implicitly, in the suppression of fuṣḥā (classical Arabic). This paper adds nuance to such generalisations by examining debates over Arabic language pedagogy during the French protectorate in Morocco. Drawing on official correspondence and internal notes exchanged between the Direction de l’instruction publique (DIP) and local school administrators, this article shows that, far from disregarding Arabic as a school subject, French colonial administrators actively attempted to reform and modernise Arabic language pedagogy by drawing on European pedagogical methodologies and new trends in foreign language teaching. I argue that these overlooked pedagogical reforms radically, if unintentionally, reframed classical Arabic from a divinely privileged language offering unique access to knowledge about the world, to merely one language amongst others, a token of a type, in need of being taught according to the universal rules of language pedagogy. In doing so, I suggest that protectorate-era Arabic classes in DIP-run schools helped lay the foundation for postcolonial debates over Arabisation and the status of Arabic dialects.

France, the IUCN and wildlife conservation in Cambodia: From colonial to global conservationism

The history of wildlife conservation in Cambodia in the twentieth century reveals the tensions that existed between the Khmer kingdom and international nature conservation networks, colonial or global. Wildlife conservation in Cambodia was not a priority for the French colonial administration. It only regulated hunting. While the global conservation movement was expanding via international conferences, local French administrators managed to obstruct the implementation of a conservation policy. After the Second World War, Western scientists and activists sought to establish reserves, particularly to protect a new species of wild cattle, the kouprey. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), through the notable efforts of Harold Coolidge, succeeded in convincing Prince Sihanouk to adopt such a policy in the 1960s. However, although 12 per cent of the kingdom's land was protected, funding and means for conservation remained largely inadequate. The war put an end to all conservation programmes. The IUCN renewed its efforts in the 1980s successfully establishing a network of protected areas in Cambodia in 1993. The various twentieth-century Cambodian wildlife conservation policies, which all imposed external models, often without prior adequate field studies or involvement of local populations, have failed to prevent emblematic species from disappearing.

The Man and His Cow: the Problem of Settlement of Fulbe-Mbororo People in the Central African Republic

The article is devoted to the problem of the settlement of the Fulbe-Mbororo people on the territory of the modern Central African Republic. For the first time in Russian historiography, an attempt is made to reconstruct the ethnic history of the Fulbe-Mbororo living in the territory of the Central African Republic in the colonial era. Particular attention is paid to the relationship of the Fulbe with the colonial administration. The article analyzes the relationship between the settlement of the fulbe in the territory of the modern Central African Republic and the spread of the zebu population in the country. The French colonial administration considered the development of animal husbandry as a potential for the economic development of the country. The author proves that with proper administrative regulation in the colonial era, it was possible to avoid conflict between Fulani nomads and settled farmers.