French Colonial Service Research Articles

The impact of the first overseas empire on the modern French colonial service at war: the cases of Hubert Deschamps and Robert Garry

Abstract How did French colonial officials, leagues removed from the metropole, decide whether to remain loyal to Vichy or to join de Gaulle in 1940? This article suggests that in addition to legalism, colonial administrators opted for Vichy in part because of a long-term anti-British imperial ethos. Cultivated in colonial circles, this ethos dwelled on humiliation by perfidious Albion in Québec, Mauritius, Madagascar and at Fashoda, rather than on points of imperial cooperation that might have been stressed, including Franco-British joint rule over the New Hebrides. In this sense, the first French overseas empire weighed mightily on mid-twentieth century colonial minds. The article focuses on two emblematic high ranking officials, Hubert Deschamps and Robert Garry. Of radically different political backgrounds, the pair served as key operatives for Vichy overseas. In so doing, they mobilized the memory of a Franco-British rivalry they saw extending from Agincourt to Mers-el-Kébir. Their colonial training coloured more than their 1940 decisions: it also conditioned the remarkable and parallel ways in which they recovered from the purges of 1944-1945.

Gabrielle Vassal (1880–1959): collecting specimens in Indochina for the British Museum (Natural History), 1900–1915

Gabrielle Maud Vassal and her husband Joseph Marguerite Jean-Baptiste Vassal, a physician in the French Colonial Service, supplied bird and mammal specimens from French Indochina and later from French colonies in Africa (Gabon, Congo) to the British Museum (Natural History) between 1900 and 1930. Gabrielle Vassal was a keen naturalist and an engaging correspondent, and many of her letters are preserved. The couple moved to Indochina (Vietnam) in 1904, and this paper focuses on her time there prior to the First World War, and how she built a relationship, both professional and personal, with staff of the Museum. Her main correspondents at that time were William Robert Ogilvie-Grant and Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas. As a woman collector, she was unusual – especially for operating in French territory and sending specimens to a British museum. Her specimens included several newly-discovered species, and a number were named after her, including Nomascus gabriellae, and her husband. She became a successful photographer, public speaker and author, recounting her travels and experiences.

Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877–1956. By Ellen J. Amster (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013) 350 pp. $54.00 cloth $27.43 paper

<i>Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877–1956.</i> By Ellen J. Amster (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013) 350 pp. $54.00 cloth $27.43 paper

Local Responses to French Medical Imperialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Algeria

This article offers the first account of the lives of Algerian-born doctors working in the French colonial medical service between 1870 and 1900. Their stories reveal the manner in which the idea of medical imperialism had collapsed in Algeria, as a result of maladministration, racial policies, competition between civil and military authorities, budgetary constraints and the rise of the colons. The article also indicates the way in which medicine became a locus of opposition to French rule. It shows how the first decades of the Third Republic were critical in terms of a shift from the earlier idea of medicine serving as an emblem of the mission civilisatrice to the ideological potential of medicine being seen in much more nuanced terms by both French settlers and Algerian locals. It is argued that the notion of cultural resistance to imperialism through medicine emerges in the 1870s and 1880s, thereby prefiguring the work of Fanon and the Front de Liberation Nationale's later analysis of the 'sickness' of colonial Algerian society.

Cactus Pear as Dryland Fodder: Ambovombe Farm, Madagascar and Wellwood Farm, South Africa Compared, c.1920-1950

For over a century the pros and cons of using Opuntia species (prickly pear, cactus pear) as stock feed in arid and semi-arid regions have been debated in print. The issue remains important since pastoralism is often a major livelihood option in disadvantaged dryland areas, and any introduced plant that might enhance pastoral production could be of great value. This paper seeks to test the argument that cactus pears increase the productivity of land devoted to livestock by comparing records for their use in two historically specific locations over a thirty-year period from 1920 to 1950: a French colonial veterinary service farm in Androy, southern Madagascar and a successful Merino sheep farm in the Karoo, South Africa. It explores the different types of experiment that can be undertaken to determine impacts on livestock-rearing as well as the methodological difficulties involved. It highlights the significance of particular Opuntia species or varieties (spiny and spineless, cultivated and wild) as well as particular ecological conditions and social management systems for determining productivity impacts. It also considers the divergent historical trajectories of investigations into Opuntia productivity in Madagascar and South Africa, relating these to broader contexts.

The practice of diaspora: literature, translation, and the rise of black internationalism

The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. By Brent Hayes Edwards. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. viii, 397; 20 illustrations. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Though trans-Atlantic connections between Africa, Europe, and the Americas have long been a subject of study, its recent revival in popularity, particularly among younger scholars, must be largely credited to the publication of Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1993). A sociologist trained in cultural studies, Gilroy's work argued for a diasporic model of cultural connection in order to understand the similarities and differences among black communities around the Atlantic, and, furthermore, the counter-modernity such communities have posed against Western humanism and its institutions. Gilroy's argument was both exciting and frustrating: exciting for the promise it held for transcending area studies boundaries and recasting the history of the Atlantic world, frustrating for its lack of empirical engagement. This latter aspect has been particularly resonant among historians familiar with the persistent, hard-won efforts by scholars of the Atlantic slave trade, from Melville Herskovits and Eric Williams to contemporaries such as John Thornton and Joseph Inikori. The Practice of Diaspora is situated between these two approaches of theory and empiricism. Brent Hayes Edwards is a literary scholar, concerned with contemporary cultural debates, though with a specific historical goal in mind: to recover and analyze the sets of trans-Atlantic relationships-from Paris and Harlem, to Martinique and Ubangui-Shari (contemporary Central African Republic)-that developed among black intellectuals during the interwar period. Edwards's work is consequently more chronologically focused and more empirically based than Gilroy's. His emphasis on Paris and the Francophone world provides an additional, productive contrast. Furthermore, Edwards employs a specific methodology for scholars to consider for future use: an emphasis on language, translation, and the general role of literary work in creating linkages and a common black sensibility in the Atlantic world. Central to his approach are journals, anthologies, and the role of book prefaces in framing blackness. Such sources underwrite his argument that black internationalism as a twentieth-century phenomenon was not merely imagined, but the outcome of a tactile, technical process of correspondence, translation, and other written practices. If this appears too textual for some readers, such reservations should be allayed by Edwards's engagement with the diversity of actors surrounding these practices, further enhanced by his eye for compelling historical detail. Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of his sources and method as described previously, additionally underscoring his commitment to anti-abstractionist uses of (p. 12) as well as proposing the notion of decalage for interpreting how diaspora may function. The use of this term-a common synonym for jet lag -may seem whimsical, though Edwards's point is the disjuncture of time and distance inherent to any understanding of diaspora. In his perspective, such discrepancies, rather than posing a challenge, actively encouraged movement and articulation. He elaborates this theory of causality in the chapters that follow. Chapter 2, for example, explores the correspondence between Rene Maran-the Martinican poet and author of Batouala, winner of the Prix Concourt in 1922-and Alain Locke, the African-American writer and critic. Batouala, born from Maran's experience in the French colonial service in Ubangui-Shari, was a particular milestone, with Maran embodying the complexities of being black, a French citizen, and a colonial administrator in Africa. …

Decolonization: The Ultimate Diaspora

Among the numerous aspects of decolonization (mostly political and economic) studied during the half-century since the beginning of the end of the British Empire, one major social phenomenon has received very little attention in the literature. This is the diaspora of the expatriate career civil servants who were still employed by HM government when independence was granted. Between the transfer of power in India in 1947 and that of Hong Kong in 1997, it is estimated that at least 25,000 prematurely retired British officials of the Indian Civil Service, the All-India Services, the Colonial Service (administration and departmental), the Sudan Political Service and the Sudan Civil Service engaged on permanent and pensionable terms returned to Britain in search of relocation and further employment. Many took up a ‘second career’ with the help of the three ad hoc ex-Service Resettlement Bureaux set up by the British government; others found employment under their own steam; a few, especially in the 45+ age group, looked for voluntary work rather than further paid employment. Based on largely unpublished material and statistics, this article summarizes and analyses the kinds of second careers secured by Britain's former imperial officials. It also invites further research, both into the comparative French, Dutch, Portuguese and Belgian Colonial Service experience and into the impact of this considerable body of experienced and able men and women on Britain's economy and society in the past half-century.

The French Colonial Service and the Issues of Reform, 1944–8

The problems of decolonisation in post-Second World War France have attracted renewed attention in recent years. A new generation of historians and political scientists has focused on why it was so difficult for the country's political and intellectual élites to accept the end of empire. This attention to the subjectivity of policy and opinion-makers has added a novel dimension to understanding how and why the end of the colonial era occurred with such difficulty and bloodshed for the French. This new orientation has largely displaced the old ‘Gaullist’ explanation for the failing of France's post-war regime, the Fourth Republic, in colonial policy. The older notion, articulated by General Charles de Gaulle himself during his twelve-year exile from political power between 1946 and 1958, blamed the unstable parliamentary coalitions and governing political parties of the era for the series of crises and disasters in colonial policy faced by a deeply fractured legislative regime. The rapid rise and fall of governments, the turnover of ministers, the constant governmental disputes on a range of questions, it was alleged, was the cause of inconsistent and weak policies incapable of meeting the succession of crises. The newer research, however, has demonstrated that the institutional problems of the Fourth Republic were not the key issue and that the essential problem lay with an inability of élites to recognise, accept and adapt to decolonisation worldwide. It has been shown that, far from having inconsistent or weak policies, the governing cadres of the Fourth Republic shared fundamentally similar concepts and goals in their determination to maintain the integrity of the French Empire. Yet this same historiography has focused on the political parties, pressure groups and shifting political landscape of French colonial policy while largely overlooking an important, though less obvious, player.

Cambodia's Khmer Serei Movement

with the Phnom Penh government are becoming familiar news items to students of Asian affairs. The origin of one particular group of Cambodian dissidents is quite interesting, however, and is historically linked with U.S. military activities in the Second Indochina War. Even though the particular politico-military group known as the Khmer Serei (free Khmer) has been segmented and in some quarters is held in disrepute, the group itself and its founder, Son Ngoc Thanh, were a formidable military force in the 1960s and 1970s. The story of the Khmer Serei's dissidence predates the Second Indochina War. It originated in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, the birthplace of Son Ngoc Thanh. Thanh was born in 1908 in the town of Tra Vinh, Vinh Binh Province, of mixed Vietnamese and Khmer Krom (ethnic Cambodians born in Vietnam) parentage.' After spending some time in France, he returned to Indochina (Vietnam) and made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the French Colonial Service. In the early 1930s, he moved to Cambodia and soon became an avowed Cambodian (Khmer) nationalist. Through religious contacts he became associated with the Cambodian Buddhist Institute and was eventually appointed its secretary.2 Through the secretary's office, Thanh supervised a select group of zealous and patriotic monks whom he used to carry nationalistic messages and Buddhist sermons throughout Cambodia and into the Mekong Delta. In 1936, he founded a newspaper to publicize his antiFrench and pro-independence views and was soon acknowledged as Cambodia's foremost nationalist spokesman.3 In 1942, Thanh was involved in an anti-French demonstration and, fear

The Depression and the Administration in South-Central Cameroun

production patterns and local economic structures. Political historians, on the other hand, tend to periodize the interwar period differently, and point out that colonial policy hardly changed during the entire two decades.2 They suggest, as some colonial administrators themselves also claimed, that the Depression and the following years was a time of great strain between rapidly altering economic conditions and stagnation in policy from the metropolitan governments.3 Writing on the French colonial service, William Cohen calls the interwar years The Era of Lost Opportunities. At the local level, however, both the administrators and indigenous populations were forced to integrate economics with politics without directives and without control over the intruding forces of the world economy. Although some developments seem to have been general throughout rural west Africa-the extension of commodity production, for example--in many other respects the experience of African peoples in their relationship with both the state and the market differed from one locality to another and one commodity to another. In his history of postwar Camerounian politics, Richard Joseph therefore looks to the 1930s to explain the source of the political diversity that emerged after 1945.4 Victor Levine argues that the Camerounian colonial state came through the Depression in fine style, running up very few debts and quickly re-establishing solvency.5 A French administrator during that time observed that the people also survived; they returned to home-produced goods for consumption and suffered severe hardships mainly due to repressive measures to extort head taxes from them.6 But the sudden plunge in prices had a profound and long-term effect on particular groups, as each section of the population, from the French administration to the peasantry struggled to maintain their steadily eroding position. This paper discusses the confrontation of political exigencies and economic realities during the Depression in the

Book Review Section: French Colonialism in Africa: Rulers of Empire, the French Colonial Service in Africa

Book Review Section: French Colonialism in Africa: Rulers of Empire, the French Colonial Service in Africa

William B. Cohen. Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. (Hoover Institution Publications 95.) Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University. 1971. Pp. xv, 279. $9.50 and Jean Suret-Canale. French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945. Translated from the French by Till Gottheiner. New York: Pica Press; distrib. by Universe Books, New York. 1971. Pp xvii, 521. $17.50

William B. Cohen. <italic>Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa</italic>. (Hoover Institution Publications 95.) Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University. 1971. Pp. xv, 279. $9.50 and Jean Suret-Canale. <italic>French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945</italic>. Translated from the French by Till Gottheiner. New York: Pica Press; distrib. by Universe Books, New York. 1971. Pp xvii, 521. $17.50

Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. By William B. Cohen. (Hoover Institution Press, 1971. Pp. 279. $9.50.)

Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. By William B. Cohen. (Hoover Institution Press, 1971. Pp. 279. $9.50.)

French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900-1945. Jean Suret-Canale , Till GottheinerRulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. William B. Cohen

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews. Jean Suret-Canale , Till Gottheiner French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900-1945. Jean Suret-Canale , Till Gottheiner Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. William B. Cohen Martin A. KleinMartin A. Klein Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 45, Number 2Jun., 1973 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/241000 Copyright 1973 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Book Reviews : William B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire, the French Colonial Service in Africa. Stan ford, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1971, pp. 279, $ 9.50

Book Reviews : William B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire, the French Colonial Service in Africa. Stan ford, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1971, pp. 279, $ 9.50

William B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire, the French Colonial Service in Africa. Stanford, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1971, pp. 279, $ 9.50

William B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire, the French Colonial Service in Africa. Stanford, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1971, pp. 279, $ 9.50

Review Notices : Rulers of Empire: the French Colonial Service in Africa. By William B. Cohen. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1971. 279 pp. $9.50

Review Notices : Rulers of Empire: the French Colonial Service in Africa. By William B. Cohen. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1971. 279 pp. $9.50

Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa

Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa

Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. By William B. Cohen. Stanford University, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1971. Pp. xv + 279, bibl. $18.

Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa. By William B. Cohen. Stanford University, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1971. Pp. xv + 279, bibl. $18.

British Tanganyika: an essay and documents on district administration by Robert Heussler Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 1971. Pp. xiii + 154. $6.75. - Rulers of Empire: the French colonial service in Africa by William B. Cohen Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1971. Pp. xv + 279. $9.50. - The Work of Administration in Nigeria: case studies by D.J. Murray

British Tanganyika: an essay and documents on district administration by Robert Heussler Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 1971. Pp. xiii + 154. 9.50. - The Work of Administration in Nigeria: case studies by D.J. Murray London, Hutchinson, 1969. Pp. xii + 153. £2.00. - Volume 10 Issue 3