The decivilizing mission: Auguste Dupuis-Yakouba and French Timbuktu

French Historical Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 541-568

  White, Owen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 15044343514     PISSN: 00161071     EISSN: 15275493     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-27-3-541     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. For a recent usage of the phrase going native in which its meaning is assumed rather than interrogated, see Linda Colley, "Going Native, Telling Tales: Captivity, Collaborations, and Empire," Past and Present, no. 168 (2000): 170-93
2. See Albert Londres, Terre d'ébène (Paris, 1998 [1929])
3. Seabrook, White Monk, 23-30
4. On this difficult conquest, see Daniel Grévoz, Les cannonières de Tombouctou: Les Français à la conquête de la cité mythique, 1870-1894 (Paris, 1992)
5. For an account of their journey to Timbuktu, see Chronique des Pères blancs (henceforth Chronique), no. 67 (July 1895): 455-81
6. also see Abbé Marin, Algérie-Sahara-Soudan: Vie, travaux, voyages de Mgr Hacquard des Pères blancs (1860-1901) d'après sa correspondance (Nancy, 1905), 374-76
7. Caillié's impression in 1828 was that "every thing had a dull appearance": René Caillié, Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo, and across the Great Desert to Morocco, Performed in the Years 1824-1828, 2 vols. (London, 1830), esp. 2:49-50
8. See also Richard L. Smith, "The Image of Timbuktu before Caillié," in Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, 1982, ed. E. P. Fitzgerald (London, 1985), 12-22
9. Successive French censuses in the town in 1898, 1909, and 1926 counted just over five thousand inhabitants, though this number fluctuated seasonally. For figures, see Editions Comité de Jumelage Saintes-Tombouctou, Tombouctou (Poitiers, 1986), 180
10. On the questionable accuracy of the census in Timbuktu, see Horace Miner, The Primitive City of Timbuctoo (Princeton, NJ, 1953), 14-15
11. Hacquard, "Journal de voyage de la première caravane du Soudan," in Chronique, no. 67, July 1895, 457-58
12. Marin, Algérie-Sahara-Soudan, 389
13. Londres, Terre d'ébène, 111
14. Chronique, no. 71 (July 1896): 449. Though a majority of Timbuktu's sedentary inhabitants spoke Songhay, the significant presence of Tuaregs and peoples of Arab descent, among other ethnicities, meant that Dupuis's interest in languages was easily satisfied in the town
15. See also RP. Dupuis, Méthode de lecture en langue Sõngay (dialecte de Tombouctou) (Paris, 1898)
16. and RP. Dupuis, Syllabaire français à l'usage des indigènes de langue Soñgay (Paris, 1898)
17. See also Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998), esp. 77, 83
18. E.g., Diaire, July 8, 1895
19. On the White Fathers and slavery in Timbuktu, see Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule, esp. 122-23
20. Joseph-Roger de Benoist, Eglise et pouvoir colonial au Soudan français: Administrateurs et missionnaires dans la Boucle du Niger (1885-1945) (Paris, 1987), 155-56
21. de Benoist, Eglise et pouvoir colonial, 77
22. Hacquard's immediate successor as superior, Father Paul Mahiet, was not a success. Dupuis described him as a stubborn "fanatic" who was unsuited to lead a mission in a staunchly Muslim town, and who stirred up hostility to the White Fathers. See APB 76 Ouest, 076 812/13, Dupuis to "Mon cher Gaston," Oct. 7, 1896. The mission in Timbuktu always operated with two priests and one lay brother, the minimum personnel requirement under the White Fathers' constitution
23. A. Dupuis-Yakouba, "Note sur la population de Tombouctou (castes et associations)," Revue d'ethnographie et de sociologie (REES), 1910, 233-36, esp. 236
24. On laicization in the French Soudan, see Owen White, Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895-1960 (Oxford, 1999), 46-49
25. Diaire, May 18 and 23, 1904
26. Also see APB 71/2a, Hacquard to Livinhac, Jan. 30, 1901, in which Hacquard suggests that doors leading directly out of the mission should be sealed. I have not been able to find the letter to which Thuillier alludes in the mission diary, though its general content can be guessed
27. Querite would more commonly be spelled quaerite
28. Miner, Primitive City of Timbuctoo, 75
29. Worthington, Strange World of Willie Seabrook, 82, lends some credence to the charge that Dupuis married Salama and even that they had children while he was superior. However, the precise date of their marriage as well as the form the ceremony took remains unclear
30. APB 74/3b, 074 157, Bazin to Livinhac, May 24, 1907
31. Diaire; Chronique, no. 135 (Feb. 1907): 57
32. APB, Rapports annuels 2 (1906-7): 36
33. Londres, Terre d'ébène, 108. He was given the title adjoint principal des affaires indigènes
34. E.g., A. Dupuis-Yakouba, "Note sur la population de Tombouctou (castes et associations)," REES, 1910, 233-36
35. Dupuis-Yakouba, Les Gow ou chasseurs du Niger: Légendes songaï de la région de Tombouctou (Paris, 1911)
36. Dupuis-Yakouba, "Notes sur les principales circonstances de vie d'un Tombouctien," REES, July-Dec. 1913, 100-104
37. Dupuis-Yakouba, "Notes sur Tombouctou (vie journalière, habillement, mobilier, etc.)," REES, July-Dec. 1914, 248-63
38. On this organization, see Emmanuelle Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l'Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France, 1878-1930 (Paris, 2002), 252-58
39. See esp. Dupuis-Yakouba, "Notes sur Tombouctou," 248-54
40. Londres, Terre d'ébène, 111, 115-16
41. Dupuis-Yakouba, Industries et principales professions, ii
42. Dupuis-Yakouba, "Notes sur Tombouctou," 263
43. See Christopher Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860-1960 (Cambridge, 1988), 62-65
44. and Louis Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power, and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society (Bloomington, IN, 2001), 39
45. Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (CAOM), Fonds Arnaud-Randau 75 Archives Privés d'Outre-Mer (APOM) 5, lieutenant governor of Upper Senegal and Niger to governor-general, Aug. 10, 1918
46. Harrison, France and Islam, 101-2
47. Paul Marty, La région de Tombouctou, vol. 2 of Etudes sur l'Islam et les tribus du Soudan (Paris, 1920), 89-99
48. Dupuis-Yakouba, Industries et principales professions, 181-82
49. Seabrook, White Monk, 206. I have not found archival evidence on this part of his career. I was told in the colonial archives in Aix that no personnel file exists in any variation on his name
50. On the birth of tourism in Timbuktu, see Maurice Delafosse, "Tombouctou et le tourisme," L'Afrique française, Feb. 1923, 72-73
51. Antoinetta Lenoël, De Nice à Tombouctou (Paris, 1917), 108-9, 118-19, 133-34
52. Also see Jane Valriant, La randonnée soudanaise de Suzanne Davenel (Paris, 1931), 173-78. Charlotville, the site of Charles Mourot's settlement, now forms Mopti's administrative district
53. Georges-Marie Haardt and Louis Audouin-Dubreuil, Le raid Citroën: La première traversée du Sahara en automobile - De Touggourt à Tombouctou par l'Atlantide (Paris, 1923), 159
54. Lady Dorothy Mills, The Road to Timbuktu (Boston, 1924), 162-63
55. David Prescott Barrows, Berbers and Blacks: Impressions of Morocco, Timbuktu, and the Western Sudan (New York, 1927), 148-49
56. François Poulalion, D'Alger à Casablanca via Tombouctou (Algiers, 1927), 41
57. Robert Randau (a pseudonym for Robert Arnaud, a leading adviser on Islamic affairs in French West Africa), Les terrasses de Tombouctou (Algiers, 1933 [1920]), 69-78
58. Sibeud, Science impériale, 278-79
59. Louis-Charles Royer, La maîtresse noire (Paris, 1931 [1928]), 99-107
60. Paul Morand, Paris-Tombouctou (Paris, 1928), 116-17
61. Seabrook, Jungle Ways, 213
62. Seabrook was already well known to French readers (and in Parisian society) as the author of The Magic Island (New York, 1929)
63. Laura Boulton, The Music Hunter: The Autobiography of a Career (New York, 1969), 96-99, in which the American musicologist describes her meeting with Dupuis-Yakouba in 1934
64. On Seabrook's research for the book and the circumstances in which it was written, see Worthington (who accompanied Seabrook on his second trip to Timbuktu), Strange World of Willie Seabrook, 72-89, 162-65
65. See also Seabrook's autobiography, No Hiding Place (Philadelphia, 1942), 318-21
66. Michael Farr, Tintin: The Complete Companion (San Francisco, 2002), 12
67. Hergé's Tintin au Congo, first serialized between 1930 and 1931, did not, however, reflect Londres's sensibilities
68. Pierre Assouline, Albert Londres: Vie et mort d'un grand reporter, 1884-1932 (Paris, 1989), esp. 387-91
69. See, e.g., Jean-Pierre Biondi, Les anticolonialistes (1881-1962) (Paris, 1993), 157
70. See, e.g., Ann Laura Stoler, "Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia," in Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1992): 514-51
71. and Neil MacMaster, "Sexual and Racial Boundaries: Colonialism and Franco-Algerian Intermarriage (1880-1962)," in Population and Social Policy in France, ed. Maire Cross and Sheila Perry (London, 1997), 92-108
72. See Rakoto Ratsimamanga, "Charles Renel," in Hommes et destins, vol. 3 (Paris, 1979), 460
73. Claude Farrère, Les civilisés (Paris, 1905)
74. Charles Renel, Le "décivilisé" (Paris, 1923), 11, 93. All quotations are from this edition
75. For an example of this usage, see Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters (Oxford, 2001), 153
76. Jean Ajalbert's Raffin Su-Su: Moeurs coloniales (Paris, 1911), set in Laos, provides one example of the literary archetype of white moral derailment in the colonies
77. Renel, Le "décivilisé," 93-95, 22, 106, 96
78. See esp. Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa: Séjour à Tahiti (Brussels, 1989)
79. For commentary on Gauguin and his largely self-created mythology, see Stephen F. Eisenman, Gauguin's Skirt (London, 1997)
80. Renel, Le "décivilisé," 93-94, 238, 247
81. On manifestations of "blackness" in France after World War I see, e.g., Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston, 1996), esp. chap. 2
82. Petrine Archer-Straw, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (New York, 2000)
83. and Jody Blake, Le Tumulte Noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900-1930 (University Park, PA, 1999)
84. The artistic interest in "primitive" forms of course predated the war, most famously in the inspiration that Picasso and other artists drew from African masks. The contribution made by Africans to the French war effort also helped inspire some of these questions; see, e.g., Joe Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth, NH, 1999), 174-76
85. Albert Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization, part 1 of The Philosophy of Civilization (London, 1923
86. Albert Schweitzer, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (London, 1922), 108
87. Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization, esp. 35-39
88. See also Schweitzer, More from the Primeval Forest (London, 1931), 81-82
89. Schweitzer, Decay and the Restoration of Civilization, 25
90. See esp. Albert Sarraut, La mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris, 1923), 84-93
91. On the theory of "association" in French West Africa, see Conklin, Mission to Civilize, 174-211. Conklin shows that this doctrine owed much to the influence of one of Dupuis-Yakouba's admirers, Maurice Delafosse
92. Pierre Mille, "Le décivilisé, ou la victoire des 'petites épouses,'" Les nouvelles littéraires, artistiques et scientifiques, Dec. 29, 1928. Mille specifically mentions Renel's novel. Albert Sarraut once described Mille as "our greatest colonial writer"
93. see Alec G. Hargreaves, The Colonial Experience in French Fiction: A Study of Pierre Loti, Ernest Psichari, and Pierre Mille (London, 1981), 4
94. Louis-Charles Royer's novel La maîtresse noire, dedicated to an administrator "décivilisé par les noirs" (1), presents a broadly sympathetic (fictional) portrait of Dupuis-Yakouba yet seems to offer a similar view of the need for administrators in particular not to overinvolve themselves in African life
95. On Hardy and the Ecole Coloniale, see William B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa (Stanford, CA, 1971), 87-97
96. Saada, "Empire of Law," 113-14
97. Georges Hardy, Ergaste, ou la vocation coloniale (Paris, 1929), 78-79
98. White, Children of the French Empire, esp. 23-27
99. See Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, L'Exposition Coloniale (Brussels, 1991), esp. 120-30
100. and Jane Valriant, Si blanche sous le grand soleil: Un séjour mouvementé au Soudan français (Paris, 1951), 110
101. Félix Dubois, Tombouctou la mystérieuse (Paris, 1897)
102. For biographical details, see Yves Saint-Martin, "Félix Dubois (1862-1945)," in Hommes et destins, vol. 5 (Paris, 1984), 179-85. Dubois spoke out against the exploitation of African labor and may consciously or unconsciously have served as a model for Londres
103. Dubois, Timbuctoo the Mysterious, 371
104. Seabrook, Air Adventure, 69
105. See also Leland Hall, Timbuctoo (New York, 1927), the shrewdest example of this genre of writing about the town
106. In Timbuctoo the Mysterious Dubois had foreseen French-controlled Timbuktu as "a pleasant and active cosmopolitan city, a point of union between the black and white worlds" (371)
107. Saad, Social History of Timbuktu, esp. 8, 11
108. For more on the ability of African societies to absorb outsiders, see Elliott P. Skinner, "Strangers in West African Societies," Africa 33 (1963): 307-20
109. Elliott P. Skinner and William A. Stack, eds., Strangers in African Societies (Berkeley, CA, 1980)
110. and Jean-Loup Amselle, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere (Stanford, CA, 1998)
111. On Morand and Africa, see Bruno Thibault, L'allure de Morand: Du modernisme au pétainisme (Birmingham, AL, 1992), 73-82