The French Army and Its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization) - Hardcover

Ginio, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803253397 ISBN 13: 9780803253391

Verlag: University of Nebraska Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

As part of France’s opposition to the independence of its former colonies in the years following World War II, its army remained deeply invested in preventing the decolonization of the territories comprising French West Africa (FWA). Even as late as the 1950s, the French Army clung to the hope that it was possible to retain FWA as a colony, believing that its relations with African soldiers could offer the perfect model for continued ties between France and its West African territories.
 
In The French Army and Its African Soldiers Ruth Ginio examines the French Army’s attempts to win the hearts and souls of the local population at a time of turbulence and uncertainty regarding future relations between the colonizer and colony. Through the prism of the army’s relationship with its African soldiers, Ginio considers how the army’s activities and political position during FWA’s decolonization laid the foundation for France’s continued active presence in some of these territories after independence. This project is the first thorough examination of the French Army’s involvement in West Africa before independence and provides the essential historical background to understanding France’s complex postcolonial military relations with its former territories in Africa.

 
 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ruth Ginio is an associate professor in the Department of History and is the head of the Inter-University Program for African Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She is the author of French Colonialism Unmasked: The Vichy Years in French West Africa (Nebraska, 2006) and the coeditor (with Efrat Ben Ze’ev and Jay Winter) of Shadows of War: A History of Silence in the Twentieth Century.

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The French Army and Its African Soldiers

The Years of Decolonization

By Ruth Ginio

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS

Copyright © 2017 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8032-5339-1

Contents

List of Illustrations, 
Acknowledgments, 
List of Abbreviations, 
Introduction, 
1. Historical Background: The Army, the Empire, and the Decolonization of French West Africa, 
2. The Aftermath of World War II: Frustration, Protest, and Rebellion, 
3. The Military Reforms: A New Army in French West Africa?, 
4. African Troops in the Wars of Decolonization: Indochina, 1946–1954, 
5. African Troops in the Wars of Decolonization: Algeria, 1954–1962, 
6. Alternatives to Independence: The Army's Colonial Vision in French West Africa, 
7. Adjusting to a New Reality: The Army and the Imminent Independence, 
Conclusion, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Historical Background

The Army, the Empire, and the Decolonization of French West Africa

The French arrived on the shores of present-day Senegal in the seventeenth century and settled along the coast. Like other Western powers at the time, the French used trade and trading posts rather than military power as a way to establish their presence in the area. Their inability to penetrate the hinterland due to transportation difficulties and diseases for which there was yet no cure, principally malaria, forced them to rely on African intermediaries in order to perform their trading activities. Up until the mid-nineteenth century the French presence was felt mainly along the coast of Senegal in four towns, later to be known as the four communes: Dakar, Gorée, Rufisque, and Saint Louis (locally called Ndar). A municipal decree from 1872 accorded a commune status to Saint Louis and Gorée; Dakar and Rufisque joined them a few years later. During this early period of French presence, two local groups emerged as significantly influential within the four communes. One was the métis, descendants of French men and African women who had gained political, social, and economic power. The other group was comprised of Africans known as the originaires, who happened to reside in these four towns when France was overwhelmed once again by the revolutionary tide in 1848. The originaires gained French citizenship without being required to renounce their personal status. This meant that even an African who did not speak a word of French, was Muslim, and was married to a few wives would automatically become a French citizen just because he happened to be in the right place at the right time. Many colonial officials would later lament this measure, uncharacteristic of republican France, and some would try to revoke it, as this was quite a privileged status within the harsh colonial reality. Nevertheless, the originaires did not lose their privileged status during the Second Empire or even under Vichy rule in the early 1940s. These originaires were allowed to vote and be elected to local assemblies and could send a representative to the French parliament. In fact, in 1914 Gorée-born Blaise Diagne (1872–1934) was the first African elected to this post after a series of métis.

The originaires were also allowed to organize and establish newspapers. But most important, they were exempt from the two most repressive colonial practices that the French implemented when they began to extend their rule to the entire area of AOF and later to the territory that became the neighboring federation of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Équatoriale Française, AEF): the indigénat and forced labor. The indigénat was a legal tool that ensured administrative control over colonial subjects. It allowed administrators and other French representatives residing in the federation to arrest a colonial subject for a period of up to fifteen days or fine him for a listed offense (in general, women were exempted from the indigénat). As one of these offenses was disrespect for colonial authority, this punishment could be applied to virtually any act a colonial subject had performed that may have upset a colonial official. The originaires were not subject to this law and therefore enjoyed much more freedom than the colonial subjects.

The other colonial practice originaires were exempt from was that of forced labor. The French recruited Africans by force to work in agricultural tasks that were considered undesirable, such as cotton cultivation and certain public projects. They paid these workers very little and forced them to work under difficult conditions, often subjecting them to brutal treatment. This practice was abolished by the French parliament only in 1946 on the initiative of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the parliamentary representative of the Ivory Coast.

Being exempt from these two colonial tools of repression was indeed aprivilege, but it came with its own set of responsibilities. As French citizens, the originaires were required to serve in the French army. Their service conditions were far better than those of the African subjects who either were recruited by force or volunteered to serve. While the originaires served in metropolitan units alongside French soldiers, the other African soldiers were drafted into a special force called the Tirailleurs Sénégalais (Senegalese Infantrymen), established in 1857, when France desperately needed African help to extend its control in West Africa.

The Structure of the French Colonial Army

During the nineteenth century the French and other Europeans acquired the means to leave the shores of Africa and reach the inland sources of their trade, thus releasing them from dependence on African intermediaries. The development of steamboats enabled Europeans to travel through narrow rivers to the hinterland, and the discovery of quinine as a means of preventing and treating malaria permitted them to do so with diminished anxiety. Although the French tried to employ diplomacy and sign dubious contracts with African local leaders in order to establish French authority, they soon encountered resistance in several areas: Haj Umar and Samori Touré in the area of present-day Guinea and Mali and King Behanzin in the region of Dahomey (Benin) were the fiercest resistors of the French expansion. The French had no choice but to use force, but they found it increasingly difficult to rely on European soldiers. They therefore began to recruit Africans, who they believed were far more resilient to the climate and geographical conditions in West Africa. They were also much cheaper to use, and their death did not raise criticism in France against unnecessary colonial adventures. African recruits thus became the backbone of the colonial army.

As shown by Anthony Clayton, there was a contradiction between France's imperial aspirations and its need for military force to fulfill them, on the one hand, and the public objections in France to sending French soldiers outside the metropolitan territory, on the other. According to French legislation, a conscript from the metropole could not be sent to sub-Saharan Africa, Syria, or Indochina (until 1945) except under special circumstances. In order to reconcile this contradiction, two new forces were established, independent of the metropolitan army, that remained responsible only for the defense of metropolitan France. One was the Armée d'Afrique,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Nebraska Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0803253397
• ISBN 13: 9780803253391
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 282
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande