Freedom, Slavery, and the French Colonial State

Before Haiti ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
John D. Garrigus
Keyword(s):  
Colonial State ◽  
French Colonial

A Bridge Across the Mediterranean

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Marriage And Divorce ◽  
Divorce Laws ◽  
The Future ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Mediterranean

During the Algerian War, Nafissa Sid Cara came to public prominence in two roles. As a secretary of state, Sid Cara oversaw the reform of Muslim marriage and divorce laws pursued by Charles de Gaulle’s administration as part of its integration campaign to unite France and Algeria. As president of the Mouvement de solidarité féminine, she sought to “emancipate” Algerian women so they could enjoy the rights France offered. Though the politics of the Algerian War circumscribed both roles, Sid Cara’s work with Algerian women did not remain limited by colonial rule. As Algeria approached independence, Sid Cara rearticulated the language of women’s rights as an apolitical and universal good, regardless of the future of the French colonial state, though she—and the language of women’s rights— remained bound to the former metropole.

Photography, Identity, and Migration

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Johann Le Guelte
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Identification Practices

This article examines the politics of interwar colonial identification practices put into place by the French colonial state in order to curtail the mobility of colonial (im)migrants. I argue that photography was used as a tool of imperial control in both French West Africa (AOF) and metropolitan France, since colonial men’s inability to provide the required photographic portraits often prevented them from moving around the empire. In response, colonial subjects appropriated photography in alternative ways to subvert these administrative restrictions. Moreover, they took advantage of metropolitan racial stereotypes to contest Western identification practices.

The Late Colonial State in the AOF and the Nomadic Societies

Itinerario ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 98-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Boilley
Keyword(s):  
Law And Order ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Niger River

Using the expression ‘late-colonial State’ obviously induces not only a chronological differentiation, but also some kind of specific institution. Is it possible to show that colonialism changed courses at an identifiable moment in time? If one observes the realities of the colonial presence in French Occidental Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française: AOF), and more particularly in the nomadic zone, a superficial glance could make one think the opposite is true. Nomads of the AOF and the area of land they travel are hardly obvious examples of ‘the colonial development’. The conquest of the Saharan areas was carried out with difficulty, hindered by immeasurable distances, the logistic difficulties of mounting and supply, the ignorance of the routes and wells, and especially the resistance to the French colonial regime from the Moorish and Tuareg nomads. The French managed to impose a lasting peace only after the Tuareg revolts of 1916 and 1917, after the fall of Djanet in the early 1920s, and finally after the pacification at the beginning of the 1930s of the last pockets of Moorish ‘dissidence’, putting an end to the raids against colonial establishments along the Niger river and in Adrar des Ifoghas. French soldiers and administrators initially held a certain mistrust towards the turbulent nomads. This feeling, combined with the apparent economic uselessness of the huge desert spaces they inhabited, makes it possible to understand that the essential efforts of colonial France were concentrated on military aspects and on keeping law and order within the major strategic routes connecting the southern and northern African possessions through the Sahara; routes that in these areas represented creations of major infrastructure.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-194
Author(s):  
Christina Elizabeth Firpo
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Black Market ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Unintended Effects ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Vietnamese Women ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Government

This chapter concludes that Tonkin's flourishing black market for sex during the interwar years owed its success in large part to French colonial rule. Colonial rule gave rise to sites of tension — economic disparity, an urban–rural divide, an uneven distribution of colonial law, and cultural shifts — and it was within them that the black market thrived. The colonial state's blind spots allowed this market to flourish. For one thing, colonial officials miscalculated the unintended effects of their strictly regulated “tolerance” system. In marginalizing certain colonized populations — in this case impoverished Vietnamese women — the French colonial state lost much of its ability to monitor and control them. Despite numerous regulations and ordinances, as well as exhaustive policing efforts, sex workers easily sidestepped the reach of the government and found ways to make money in an informal economy. The chapter also states that the stories of the women and girls in this book reveal a close relationship between choice and coercion. Taken individually, it is tempting to reduce these people's experiences to a binary of either agency or victimhood. But placing their stories within the context of larger historical trends such as mass poverty, migration, and cultural change reveals that this binary is misleading.

Livestock mobility and the territorial state: South-Western Niger (1890–1920)

Africa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 578-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Resource Base ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
Sufficient Power ◽  
British Colony ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Herd Mobility

AbstractColonial rule in West Africa initiated the incorporation of mobile people, particularly pastoralists, into Western territorial states. This article reports on the early period of French colonial rule of the area that is now South-Western Niger – a strategically important area with respect to territorial competition among the French colonies of Dahomey and Soudan (later the colonies of Senegambia and Niger) as well as the British colony of Nigeria. Building from the study of contemporary patterns of livestock mobility and their logics, archival and secondary literatures are used to develop an understanding of dominant herd mobility patterns at the time (transhumance for grazing and trekking to distant markets); the importance of livestock as a source of tax revenue; colonial anxieties about the loss of livestock from within their borders; and efforts of colonial administrators to reduce the potential loss of livestock from their territories. This case illustrates the limitations of the territorial state model where the state lacks sufficient power over mobile subjects utilizing a sparse and fluctuating resource base. The actions of French administrators and Fulɓe pastoralists worked as a form of ‘hands-off’ negotiation, with each group monitoring and reacting to the actions of the other. Due to the limitations of colonial state control, the existence of boundaries elicited greater monitoring of livestock movements by colonial administrators but also increased the leverage held by mobile pastoralists as the French sought to increase the attractiveness of their territory to the principal managers of its wealth (livestock). The proximity of borders to the study area complicated the task of French colonial administrators, who necessarily became increasingly focused on monitoring the movements of their subjects (labour and capital) to avoid their possible escape as they moved within the borderlands of what is now South-Western Niger. The limits of colonial power to monitor and control these movements led administrators to initiate policies favouring pastoralists.

scholarly journals Sex work, containment and the new discourse of public health in French colonial Levant

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 330-346
Author(s):  
Pascale N. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Health Knowledge ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
Commercial Sex Work ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Sex Work Policy ◽  
French Colonial

AbstractThis article addresses how French academics, doctors and state bureaucrats formulated sex work as a pathology, an area of inquiry that had to be studied in the interest of public safety. French colonisation in the Levant extended the reach of this ‘expertise’ from the metropole to Lebanon under the guise of public health. Knowledge produced by academics was used to buttress colonial state policy, which demanded that sex workers be contained to protect society against medical contagion. No longer drawing conclusions based on speculation, the medical establishment asserted its authority by harnessing modern advances in science and uniting them with extensive observation. ‘Empirical facts’ replaced ‘opinions’, as doctors forged new approaches to studying and containing venereal disease. They accomplished this through the use of statistics and new methods of diagnosing and treating maladies. Their novel approach was used to treat sex workers and to support commercial sex work policy both at home and abroad. Sex workers became the objects of scientific study and were consequently problematised by the state in medicalised terms.

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