The color line behind the lines: Racial violence in France during the Great War

American Historical Review

Volumn 103, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 737-769

  Stovall, Tyler ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750918857     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2650570     Document Type: Article

References (295)

1. The historical literature on France and World War I is of course voluminous. For a good overview, see in particular Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La France et les Français, 1914-1920 (Paris, 1972).
2. On the home front, see Jean-Jacques Becker, 1914: Comment les français sont entrés dans la guerre (Paris, 1977);
3. Becker, The Great War and the French People, Arnold Pomerans, trans. (Leamington Spa, 1985);
4. and Patrick Fridenson, ed., The French Home Front, 1914-1918 (Providence, R.I., 1992).
5. Useful memoirs include Remy Cazals, ed., Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier 1914-1918 (Paris, 1978);
6. Louise Delétang, Journal d'une ouvrière Parisienne pendant la guerre (Paris, 1936);
7. and H. Pearl Adam, Paris Sees It Through (London, 1919).
8. Although the term "nonwhites" is more than a little problematic, I choose to use it here because it expresses precisely the kind of reductionist view of peoples from outside Europe that arose in wartime France. In particular, the term here refers to North Africans, black Africans, Indochinese, and Chinese.
9. On the presence of nonwhites in France before the twentieth century, see William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880 (Bloomington, Ind., 1980);
10. Shelby McCloy, The Negro in France (Lexington, Ky., 1961);
11. Michel Fabre, La rive noire (Paris, 1985).
12. On the perception of France as a color-blind society, see Fabre, La rive noire;
13. McCloy, Negro in France;
14. Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York, 1989);
15. Léon-François Hoffman, Le Nègre romantique (Paris, 1973);
16. Roi Ottley, No Green Pastures (New York, 1951);
17. James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York, 1933);
18. Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston, 1996).
19. Major historical studies of collective violence include George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1959);
20. Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848 (New York, 1964);
21. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement (New York, 1963);
22. Albert Soboul, The Sans-Culottes: The Popular Movement and Revolutionary Government 1793-1794 (Garden City, N.Y., 1972);
23. Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (New York, 1973);
24. E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (February 1971): 76-136;
25. Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).
26. Elliott M. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Carbondale, Ill., 1964);
27. William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York, 1970);
28. Robert V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge, La., 1976).
29. Some of the most important works taking a cultural studies approach to questions of race include Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., "Race," Writing, and Difference (Chicago, 1986);
30. bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston, 1990);
31. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1993);
32. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston, 1990);
33. Cornel West, "Black Culture and Postmodernism," in Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani, eds., Remaking History (Seattle, Wash., 1989);
34. Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd, The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse (New York, 1990);
35. Thomas C. Holt, "Marking: Race, Race-making, and the Writing of History," AHR 100 (February 1995): 1-20. Also important in this regard are the recent studies of "whiteness" as a type of identity formation based in racial conflict.
36. See David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991);
37. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and Working Class History (London, 1994);
38. Alander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (London, 1990);
39. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
40. J. William Harris, "Etiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History: A Mississippi Example," AHR 100 (April 1995): 387-410;
41. see also W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 (Urbana, Ill., 1993);
42. George C. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and "Legal Lynchings" (Baton Rouge, La., 1990);
43. Michael Keith, Race, Riots and Policing: Lore and Disorder in a Multi-Racist Society (London, 1993);
44. Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, Mass., 1988). Some very interesting contributions to this subject have been made by writers studying the intersections of race, sex, and violence in colonial history.
45. See Hazel Carby, "'On the Threshold of Woman's Era': Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory," in Gates, "Race," Writing, and Difference;
46. Pamela Scully, "Rape, Race, and Colonial Culture: The Sexual Politics of Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, South Africa," AHR 100 (April 1995): 335-59.
47. Barbara J. Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review 181 (1990): 95-116;
48. Robert Miles, Racism (London, 1989);
49. Nell Irvin Painter, "French Theories in American Settings: Some Thoughts on Transferability," Journal of Women's History 1 (Spring 1989): 92-95;
50. Steve Vieux, "In the Shadow of Neo-liberal Racism," Race and Class 36 (July-September 1994): 23.
51. Of particular interest in this regard is Laura Tabili, "We Ask for British Justice": Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994).
52. As Stuart Hall has argued, "One must start, then, from the concrete historical 'work' which racism accomplishes under specific historical conditions - as a set of economic, political and ideological practices, of a distinctive kind, concretely articulated with other practices in a social formation." Hall, "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance," in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (Paris, 1980), 338.
53. I draw here on the ideas of Michael Omi and Howard Winant, who have shown how discourses on race have been key to recent American history, emphasizing race as a social and political construct. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York, 1986).
54. The phrase "colonial workers" (or "exotic workers") applied to people of color in general, including Chinese contract laborers, in wartime France. It contrasted with the use of the term "immigrant workers" for non-French Europeans and thus served to construct the identity of both groups along racial lines. In order to conform to French practices at the time, in this article I have followed the practice of including the Chinese in the category of colonial workers.
55. An important and rapidly growing body of literature currently exists on race and immigration in contemporary France. While much of the literature views immigration as primarily not a racial issue, other works highlight racial distinctions. For examples of the former, see Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity, Geoffrey de Laforcade, trans. (Minneapolis, 1996);
56. e siècle (Paris, 1992);
57. Yves Lequin, La mosaïque France: Histoire des étrangers et de l'immigration (Paris, 1988);
58. Patrick Weil, La France et ses étrangers: L'aventure d'une politique de l'immigration, 1938-1991 (Paris, 1991);
59. for the latter, see Maxim Silverman, ed., Race, Discourse, and Power in France (Aldershot, 1991);
60. Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism, and Citizenship in Modern France (London, 1992);
61. G. Kepel, Les banlieues d'Islam: Naissance d'une religion en France (Paris, 1991);
62. Cathie Lloyd and Hazel Waters, "France: One Culture, One People?" Race and Class 32, no. 3 (1991): 49-66;
63. Pierre-André Tagguieff, "The New Cultural Racism in France," Telos (Spring 1990): 109-22;
64. William Safran, "The French and Ethnic Pluralism," Ethnic and Racial Studies (October 1984): 447-61.
65. Interesting case studies on racism in contemporary France include Françoise Gaspard, A Small City in France, Arthur Goldhammer, trans. (Cambridge, Mass., 1995)
66. Eric Roussel, Le cas Le Pen: Les nouvelles droites en France (Paris, 1985);
67. Martin Schain, "The National Front in France and the Construction of Political Legitimacy," West European Politics 10 (April 1987): 229-52.
68. Natalie Zemon Davis, "Rites of Violence," in Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, Calif., 1965). The link between religious and ethnic hatred certainly did not disappear in the twentieth century, as demonstrated by the anti-Semitism of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the hostility to Islam so prevalent in contemporary France. In spite of the unprecedented presence of Muslims on French soil, however, religion does not seem to have played a role in the racial violence of World War I.
69. Tilly, Contentious French, 194,269;
70. Noiriel, French Melting Pot, 258-62;
71. Eugen Weber, France, Fin de Siècle (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 134-35;
72. Michelle Perrot, "Les rapports entre ouvriers français et étrangers (1871-1893)," Bulletin de la Société d'histoire moderne (1966);
73. Anne-Marie Faidutti-Rudolph, L'immigration italienne dans le Sud-Ouest de la France (Gap, 1964);
74. Paul Gemähling, Travailleurs au rabais: La lutte syndicale contre les sous-concurrences ouvrières (Paris, 1910);
75. Yves Lefebvre, L'ouvrier étranger et la protection du travail national (Paris, 1901).
76. Henri Bunle, Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l'étranger: Etudes et documents (Paris, 1943), 67.
77. On immigrant labor in France during the early twentieth century, see Gary S. Cross, Immigrant Workers in Industrial France: The Making of a New Laboring Class (Philadelphia, 1983);
78. Juliette Minces, Les travailleurs étrangers en France (Paris, 1973);
79. Serge Bonnet, "Italian Immigration in Lorraine," Journal of Social History 2 (Winter 1968): 123-55;
80. Georges Mauco, Les étrangers en France (Paris, 1932);
81. Bernard Granotier, Les travailleurs immigrés en France (Paris, 1970);
82. Nancy L. Green, The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Epoque (New York, 1986);
83. Andre Kaspi, Le Paris des étrangers (Paris, 1989);
84. Laurent Azzano, Mes joyeuses années au faubourg (Paris, 1985).
85. On French colonial soldiers in World War I, see Marc Michel, L'appel à l'Afrique: Contributions et réactions à l'effort de guerre en A.O.F. (1914-1919) (Paris, 1982);
86. Charles John Balesi, From Adversaries to Comrades-in-Arms: West Africans and the French Military, 1885-1918 (Waltham, Mass., 1979);
87. Agustin Bernard, L'Afrique du nord pendant la guerre (Paris, 1926);
88. Charles Agéron, Les Algériens musulmans et la France (1871-1919), 2 vols. (Paris, 1968);
89. Joe Harris Lunn, "Kande Kamara Speaks: An Oral History of the West African Experience in France 1914-18," in Melvin E. Page, ed., Africa and the First World War (London, 1987).
90. Bertrand Nogaro and Lucien Weil, La main-d'oeuvre étrangère et colonial pendant la guerre (Paris, 1926), 25.
91. See Gilbert Meynier, "La France coloniale de 1914 à 1931," in Jacques Thobie, Gilbert Meynier, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, and Charles-Robert Agéron, Histoire de la France coloniale, Vol. 2, 1914-1990 (Paris, 1990), 78. Meynier mentions one French officer who argued that the number of colonial workers was as high as 310,000 during World War I.
92. On foreign labor in France during World War I, see Nogaro and Weil, La main-d'oeuvre étrangère;
93. John Horne, "Immigrant Workers in France during World War I," French Historical Studies 24, no. 1 (1985): 57-88;
94. Jean Vidalenc, "La main d'oeuvre étrangère en France et la première guerre mondiale (1901-1926)," Francia 2 (1974): 524-50;
95. Mireille Favre, "Un milieu porteur de modernisation: Travailleurs et tirailleurs vietnamiens en France pendant la première guerre mondiale," 2 vols. (Doctoral thesis, Ecole Nationale des Chartres, Paris, 1986);
96. Tyler Stovall, "Colour-blind France? Colonial Workers during the First World War," Race and Class 35, no. 2 (1993): 33-55.
97. Jacques Barzun, The French Race (New York, 1932), 251.
98. On the historical evolution of race as a category, see Michael Banton, Racial Theories (Cambridge, 1987);
99. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, Chris Turner, trans. (London, 1991);
100. Colette Guillaumin, "The Idea of Race and Its Elevation to Autonomous Scientific and Legal Status," in Sociological Theories.
101. Also very interesting in this regard is Ann Laura Stoler's recent discussion of Michel Foucault's ideas on colonialism and race, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, N.C., 1995).
102. This has been remarked on in particular by historians of British-Irish relations: see, for example, Richard Ned Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland: The Influence of Stereotype on Colonial Policy (Philadelphia, 1976);
103. L ynn Hollen Lees, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979).
104. For France, see in particular Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Frank Jellinek, trans. (Princeton, N.J., 1973);
105. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, Calif., 1976).
106. George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (1978; rpt. edn., Madison, Wis., 1985).
107. Cohen, French Encounter with Africans; Louis Sala-Molins, Le Code Noir (Paris, 1987).
108. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, Howard Greenfeld, trans. (1965; rpt. edn., Boston, 1965), 79.
109. See, for example, Jules Ninine, La main-d'oeuvre indigène dans les colonies françaises (Paris, 1934).
110. Jules Guesde, "La vraie solidarité," Le citoyen (May 7, 1882),
111. cited in Michelle Perrot, Les ouvriers en grève: France 1871-1890 (Paris, 1974), 1: 178.
112. During World War I, 200,000 African Americans served the U.S. Army in France, most being employed as laborers rather than soldiers. Their presence in France, not to mention the role of the war in spurring black migration from the South to the North, underlines the parallel between African-American and French colonial workers. See Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I (Philadelphia, 1974).
113. Following the lead of Anne McClintock, I would argue here that colonialism and postcolonialism are not necessarily sequentially arranged along a linear time line but represent different aspects of racial and global history that can occur at the same time. The experience of colonial labor in wartime France thus represents an instance of these two phenomena overlapping. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York, 1995).
114. This was especially true of the Spaniards, roughly 70 percent of all European immigrant workers in France during the war. Many of them entered France clandestinely and, once in the country, successfully resisted attempts to prevent them from changing jobs in search of higher wages. See Horne, "Immigrant Workers," 64-67.
115. In theory, enlistment in the French colonies for work duty in France was voluntary, but an examination of recruitment procedures in North Africa, Indochina, and Madagascar makes clear that more than a little pressure was brought to bear on potential workers. See Stovall, "Colour-blind France?";
116. also Favre, "Un milieu porteur," 1: 241-47.
117. Created on January 1, 1916, the SOTC worked in coordination with other government agencies, especially the Ministry of Labor. Nogaro and Weil, La main-d'oeuvre étrangère, 18. On the administration of colonial workers, see the numerous documents in the following cartons at the French National Archives (hereafter, AN): F 14 11331, F 14 11332, F 14 11334, 94 AP 135, 94 AP 140.
118. ème semestre 1917"; letter of June 17, 1918, letter of April 16, 1918.
119. AN F 14 11334, report of July 7, 1917.
120. AN 94 AP 135, report of August 16, 1916.
121. AN F 14 11331, report of February 16, 1918. The report went on to note the hostility of local dockworkers to the Chinese. See also the March 5, 1916, report on Indochinese workers in the Tarbes arsenal, AN 94 AP 135. There are several reports in AN cartons F 14 11331 and F 14 11334 about the high wages of French workers relative to those of their colonial colleagues.
122. AN F 14 11331, letter of March 21, 1918.
123. On the theory of split labor markets, see above all the works of Edna Bonacich, such as "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," American Sociological Review 37 (1972): 547-59;
124. and "Advanced Capitalism and Black/White Relations in the United States: A Split Labor Market Interpretation," American Sociological Review 41 (1976): 34-51.
125. For example, in August 1916, an inspector visiting a camp of Indochinese workers in the Dordogne observed with alarm colonial and French workers drinking together in local cafés. His concern reflected not just fears of alcoholism but also a desire to prevent the integration of the Indochinese into French working-class culture. Archives Nationales, Section Outre-Mer (hereafter, ANSOM), SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of August 27, 1916.
126. SH 7 N 993, report of May 15, 1916. As the postwar histories of anticolonial activists Ho Chi Minh and Messali Hadj demonstrated, this was no idle fear. See Claude Liauzu, Aux origines des tiers-mondismes: Colonisés et anticolonialistes en France (1919-1939) (Paris, 1982).
127. On French women in the war industries, see Laura Lee Downs, "Women's Strikes and the Politics of Popular Egalitarianism in France, 1916-1918," in Lenard R. Berlanstein, ed., Rethinking Labor History (Urbana, Ill., 1993);
128. James F. McMillan, Housewife or Harlot? The Place of Women in French Society, 1870-1940 (New York, 1981);
129. Françoise Thébaud, La femme au temps de la guerre de 14 (Paris, 1986);
130. Mathilde Dubesset, Françoise Thébaud, and Catherine Vincent, "The Female Munitions Workers of the Seine," in Fridenson, French Home Front; Annie Fourcaut, Femmes à l'usine (Paris, 1982);
131. Jean-Louis Robert, "Women and Work in France during the First World War," in Richard Wall and Jay Winter, eds., The Upheaval of War: Family, Work, and Welfare in Europe, 1914-1918 (Cambridge, 1988).
132. SH 7 N 997, "Rapport Mensuel," July-August 1917, letter from Landriamanalina.
133. The question of relations between French women and male colonial workers was crucial for French administrators. By 1918, they had become a major source of concern for the censors who supervised colonial correspondence, leading them to keep monthly reports on instances of such liaisons. SH 7 N 1001, report of June 1917; Favre, "Un milieu porteur," 2: 527-45;
134. Horne, "Immigrant Workers," 80-81;
135. Tyler Stovall, "Love, Labor, and Race: Colonial Men and White Women in France during the Great War," unpublished paper, "(Im)migrant Identities," 12th annual conference of the Critical Theory Program, University of California, Davis, October 1996.
136. He went on to claim that he had four girlfriends himself, and that he was "au comble de la volupté." SH 7 N 1001, "Rapport sur les operations de la commission militaire de contrôle postal de Tunis," April 1917.
137. These resolutions were passed by the Fédération des Bourses du Travail, at its meetings of 1901 in Nice and 1902 in Algiers. The CGT never addressed the issue. François Bédarida, "Perspectives sur le mouvement ouvrier et l'impérialisme en France au temps de la conquête coloniale," Le mouvement social 86 (January-March 1974): 25-43.
138. Bédarida, "Perspectives sur le mouvement ouvrier"; see on this point the work of Charles-Robert Agéron, especially L'anticolonialisme en France de 1871 à 1914 (Paris, 1973);
139. France coloniale ou parti colonial? (Paris, 1978);
140. "Jaurès et les socialistes français devant la question algérienne (de 1895 à 1914)," Le mouvement social 42 (January-March 1963): 1-29. The major French Socialist writer on imperialism was Paul Louis; see his Le colonialisme (Paris, 1905).
141. Bédarida, "Perspectives sur le mouvement ouvrier";
142. Cohen, French Encounter with Africans;
143. Jacques Ozouf and Mona Ozouf, "Le thème du patriotisme dans les manuels primaires," Le mouvement social 49 (October-December 1964): 5-31;
144. William Schneider, An Empire for the Masses: the French Popular Image of Africa, 1870-1900 (Westport, Conn., 1982);
145. Thomas August, The Selling of the Empire: British and French Imperialist Propaganda, 1890-1940 (Westport, 1985).
146. Concerns about foreign labor paralleled union fears about the use of women in heavy industry during the war. While most unions and male workers accepted the national need for women to work in the war plants, many still expressed misgivings. Some feared that working women would be used to free men to be drafted and sent to the front lines. Another concern was the belief that employers would use women to lower wages for male workers and to promote Taylorist means of workplace organization that would devalue the talents of skilled workers and weaken workplace control. Some union leaders believed that, since women had lower rates of union membership than men, employers would use women workers to weaken the union movement. Finally, many male workers shared the natalist concern that work in heavy industry would weaken women's fertility and thus intensify the nation's crisis of reproduction. See Jean-Louis Robert, "La CGT et la famille ouvrière, 1914-1918," Le mouvement social 116 (July-September 1981): 47-66;
147. Downs, "Women's Strikes."
148. On the CGT's attitude to foreign labor during the war, see especially Jean-Louis Robert, "Ouvriers et mouvement ouvrier parisiens pendant la grande guerre et l'immédiat après-guerre," 9 vols. (Thèse doctorat d'Etat, Université de Paris-1, 1989), 2: chap. 9;
149. John Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914-1918 (Oxford, 1991), 107-13.
150. CGT immigration policy was largely based on a report drawn up by Léon Jouhaux early in 1916 that emphasized union control of immigrants over their exclusion. See Jouhaux in La bataille syndicaliste (September 22, 1916): 1.
151. AN 94 AP 135, letter of September 23, 1916. On the attitude of the CGT to the question of foreign labor during the war, see Cross, Immigrant Workers, chap. 1;
152. Horne, "Immigrant Workers," 83-84. In July 1917, partly to allay the concerns of French unions about immigrant workers, the French government created the CIMO, the Interministerial Conference on Labor, to bring together government, employer, and union representatives in discussions of concerns about labor policies;
153. see the documents in AN F 14 11334.
154. La bataille syndicaliste (May 3, 1916): 1;
155. La bataille syndicaliste ((April 29, 1917): 1;
156. La bataille syndicaliste ((August 5, 1917): 1;
157. La bataille syndicaliste ((August 15, 1917): 1;
158. La bataille syndicaliste ((September 1, 1917): 2;
159. La bataille syndicaliste ((September 26, 1917): 2;
160. La bataille syndicaliste ((November 19, 1917): 3;
161. La bataille syndicaliste ((November 22, 1917): 2;
162. La bataille syndicaliste ((November 24, 1917): 1;
163. La bataille syndicaliste ((January 13, 1918): 1. The Belgians, frequent targets of pre-war hostility, were now portrayed as refugees from German oppression who deserved the support of French patriots.
164. La bataille syndicaliste (December 22, 1916): 1.
165. Léon Jouhaux, "L'emploi de la main-d'oeuvre étrangère: A propos des travailleurs chinois," La bataille syndicaliste (November 18, 1916): 1. Such fears of the disappearance of the French race as a result of the war once more linked discussions about colonial workers to questions of natalism.
166. See Ruth Harris, "The Child of the Barbarian: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War," Past and Present 141 (November 1993): 170-207.
167. On the broader issue of natalism in wartime and postwar France, see Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Chicago, 1994).
168. Favre, "Un milieu porteur," 2: 508-23;
169. Robert, "Ouvriers," 2: 390-419;
170. Vidalenc, "La main d'oeuvre étrangère," 540; AN F 14 11334, report of July 7, 1917; SH 6 N 149, letter of January 29, 1918.
171. Humanité (July 19, 1917): 4.
172. For example, on March 16, 1917, the right-wing newspaper Le figaro printed an article entitled "L'action kabyle," which lampooned Kabyle street sweepers for lounging around gawking at the sights of Paris rather than doing their jobs. Interestingly, on the very next page (p. 3) of the same issue, an article appeared praising the courage of Moroccan soldiers on the French front lines.
173. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of June 19, 1917.
174. Delétang, Journal d'une ouvrière Parisienne pendant la guerre, 50. The Moroccan never spoke to her or threatened her in any way.
175. Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, B/a 1587, "Physiognomie de Paris: Kabyle Manners," report of January 8, 1918, p. 9.
176. Thanks to the wartime practice of censorship and the desire to monitor the feelings of this new labor force, French archives contain detailed reports on the letters written by colonial workers to friends and relatives, including hundreds of copies of the letters themselves. These letters constitute an extremely valuable source, a rare example of testimony by people at the bottom of French society. Yet they are by no means the direct, unmediated voice of these individuals, and thus must be approached carefully. The censors had their own agendas, often choosing to emphasize examples of defeatist speech or sexual relations with French women, and their selection of specific letters for reproduction reflects both these perspectives as well as a real effort to understand colonial workers' state of mind. Many of the authors of these letters were illiterate, and the scribes who wrote their missives certainly must have altered their contents at times. Finally, the authors were aware that French authorities read their mail, and composed their messages with this in mind. One censor noted that letters written by Tunisian workers in French expressed contentment, whereas those written in Arabic were full of complaints. SH 7 N 1001, report of May 1917. Rather than dismissing the importance of these letters for such reasons, however, I would argue that the historian can use them as a way of analyzing relations of knowledge and power between colonial workers, the foremen who often served as scribes, French authorities, and the French public in general. On the history of the military censorship commissions, see the documents in SH 7 N 949, 7 N 995; G. Liens, "La Commission de censure et la Commission de contrôle postal à Marseilles, pendant la première guerre mondiale," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (October-December 1971): 649-67.
177. Conflicts between French and nonwhite individuals did not constitute the only kind of racial violence to take place in France during the Great War. There were also several incidents of fighting between different groups of nonwhite workers and soldiers. For example, a battle between Senegalese soldiers and Indochinese workers in Saint-Médard resulted in the death of one of the latter, as well as wounding several on both sides. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of Agent Massebeuf to the Minister of War, Saint-Médard, July 26, 1917. Also see AN F 14 11334, report of June 9, 1917; SH 6 N 19, letter from Minister of War to Minister of Foreign Affairs (n.d.); SH 7 N 997, reports of July-August, August, and November 1917. A very different series of conflicts involved fights between white American military personnel and nonwhites, usually French colonial soldiers. In contrast to the racial violence discussed in this article, in these incidents French civilians at times intervened against the Americans in favor of French nonwhites. See Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers;
178. Addie W. Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson, Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces (New York, 1920);
179. Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime (Paris, 1980), 323. Whereas conflict between colonial workers seems to have followed the general chronological pattern of French/colonial violence, fights with Americans took place mostly at the end of the war and during 1919.
180. A good overview of this racial violence is provided by Minister of the Interior to Minister of Colonies, July 10, 1917, ANSOM, DSM, carton 5.
181. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of June 23, 1917, noting that the four Frenchmen had committed a similar assault on Moroccan workers a few weeks previously.
182. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of June 5, 1917. One of the two soldiers had lost a leg in the war and was equipped with a wooden leg and crutches, which he used to beat his victims that night.
183. See reports on similar incidents in Le Mans (report of June 24, 1917), Bourg (report of May 3, 1918), and Rochefort (undated telegram). The latter document described the incident as "provoked by civilian workers and one soldier in a state of drunkenness. They wounded three Moroccans, one seriously, with bottles . . . the Moroccans in no way provoked this incident."
184. In addition to these, a report from the Ministry of War to the Ministry of Colonies alludes to a riot in the Parisian neighborhood of La Villette between North African workers and French soldiers and civilians. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, June 24, 1917. Another report, July 2, 1917, suggests that anti-North African violence in Paris may have resulted in a few deaths but gives no details.
185. The presence of these workers provoked several discussions in the Paris City Council, frequently hostile. One such debate not only included a resolution from the Street Cleaners Union attacking North African labor but also used the derogatory term for Arab, "sidi"; on this occasion, the council drafted an appeal to the prefect of the Seine to recruit more French workers as street cleaners. Conseil Municipal de Paris - Procès-verbaux, 1917, November 30, 1917, no. 55.
186. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of June 19, 1917. A report from the Ministry of Colonies to the Ministry of War noted that, given popular hostility to North Africans, "it seems that it would make sense to utilize elsewhere, if possible, the Kabyle workers employed in the streets of Paris, whose presence in the capital has given rise on several occasions to regrettable incidents that could have had the gravest consequences." ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, July 26, 1917.
187. SH 7 N 997, "Extraits de lettres adressées en Indochine," August 1917.
188. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, reports of July 31, August 1, August 10, August 25, and September 4, 1917; SH 7 N 997, report of August 1917. On the Indochinese workers at Saint-Médard, see Favre, "Un milieu porteur," vol. 2. The largest concentration of Indochinese workers was located at the huge state arsenal in Toulouse, where they numbered over 9,000 out of a total number of 32,000 people employed there.
189. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 1, carton 8: "Contrôle Postal Malgache," report of February, 1918.
190. SH 17 N 156, telegram of September 9, 1918; letter of May 12, 1918; letter of October 20, 1918; AN F 14 11331, reports of February 1, 1918, March 1, 1918, December 11, 1918, April 24, 1919; AN 94 AP 135, report of August 16, 1916; AN F 7 13619, report of November 20, 1918.
191. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 1, carton 8: "Contrôle Postal Indochinois," August 1918. In response, French authorities confined the Indochinese who took part in the attack to their barracks for three months.
192. AN F 14 11331, "Rapport de l'ingénieur," Rouen, January 25, 1918;
193. see also the letter from the Ministry of Public Works, February 8, 1918.
194. French reports on colonial workers are full of warnings about the danger of allowing them to associate with less respectable elements in the society surrounding them. Judging from this and other observations, however, it seems likely that any French person, especially a French woman, who associated with nonwhites was considered amoral and criminal, or at least not respectable. See also ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of July 31, 1917. Laura Tabili has recently made a similar observation with regard to interracial settlements in interwar Britain. See "We Ask for British Justice," 135-60.
195. AN 94 AP 140, Rennes, telegram of August 6, 1917; ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, Brest, report of August 5, 1917.
196. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, Dijon, June 20, 1917, reports by Temsil, Benaich; telegram of June 19, 1917. Benaich's report suggests that troubles arose after a drunken French soldier tried to pluck a boutonniere from the jacket of a Moroccan worker.
197. This was also true of both the United States and Britain. During the war, French ports were full of men of color from throughout the world unloading Allied ships full of war material. On the British, see Tabili, "We Ask for British Justice, " 15-29;
198. Albert Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg, 1987);
199. P. Wou, Les travailleurs chinois et la grande guerre (Paris, 1939).
200. On the employment of African-American laborers on French docks, see Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers;
201. Hunton and Johnson, Two Colored Women;
202. Emmett J. Scott, The American Negro in the World War (Chicago, 1919);
203. Isaac Marcosson, S.O.S.: America's Miracle in France (New York, 1919).
204. The report on the riot emphasizes the exploitation of Moroccan workers by both French landlords and fellow Moroccans, painting a lurid portrait of a naïve population sunk in the iniquities of gambling and prostitution.
205. On the housing of colonial workers during the war, see AN F 14 11331, reports of September 21, 1917, July 18, 1918; AN 94 AP 135, reports of March 18, March 21, 1916. On the French housing crisis during World War I, see Susanna Magri, La politique du logement (Paris, 1972);
206. Anthony Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850-1970 (Montreal, 1971);
207. Henri Sellier, et al., Paris pendant la guerre (Paris, 1926);
208. Tyler Stovall, "Sous les toits de Paris: The Working Class and the Paris Housing Crisis, 1914-1924," Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 14 (1987): 265-72.
209. ème semestre 1917"; AN 94 AP 135, message of June 19, 1917; AN F 14 11334, letter of July 2, 1917; Vidalenc, "La main d'oeuvre étrangère," 536.
210. This could also reflect a certain lack of concern with nonwhites in general. It is interesting to note that, of the few cases in which assailants were arrested, one involved the injured Moroccans themselves rounding up the culprits, whereas the other concerned the arrest of six Moroccans accused of attacking French civilians. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, reports of June 5, 1917, June 24, 1917.
211. Humanité, May 13, 1917, August 19, 1917, September 17, 1917. La bataille syndicaliste, official organ of the CGT, only devoted a little more attention to the issue: April 17, 1916, April 21, 1916, August 27, 1916, November 18, 1916, December 22, 1916, July 14, 1918, November 25, 1918.
212. Humanité (June 23, 1917): 1.
213. This lack of attention to racial violence undoubtedly reflects the isolation of colonial workers, their control by the military, and the broader impact of wartime censorship.
214. All reports agree that violence between nonwhites and the French was almost always the fault of the latter. As a report noted in July 1917, "It has been established, almost every time, that the North African or colonial workers had been provoked by the military or civilian French population." ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of July 10, 1917.
215. On the hatred of French soldiers for shirkers, see Jean Norton Cru, War Books: A Study in Historical Criticism, Stanley J. Pincetl, Jr., ed. (San Diego, Calif., 1988);
216. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Men at War, 1914-1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism during the First World War, Helen McPhail, trans. (Providence, R.I., 1992);
217. André Ducasse, et al., Vie et mort des Français, 1914-1918 (1959; rpt. edn., Paris, 1969);
218. Jacques Meyer, La vie quotidienne des soldats pendant la grande guerre (Paris, 1966).
219. For a classic statement of the confusion experienced by a French soldier on leave, see the memoir by Louis Barthas: Cazals, Les carnets, especially 536-39.
220. Roberts, Civilization without Sexes. Such reasoning could, of course, lead a soldier on leave to attack civilians in general, but there is no indication of any significant number of such assaults. I would argue that colonial workers were more likely targets because civilians seemed to hate them as well (many attacks involved soldiers and civilians working together), and because French soldiers rarely if ever had the kind of kinship or affective ties to colonial workers that bound them to French civilians. The soldier's duty was to fight for France, but this idea of "France" did not necessarily include colonial workers.
221. For one thing, it would have required a level of investment in colonial workers' encampments that the French were simply not prepared to undertake during the war.
222. AN 94 AP 135, report of August 16, 1916. If any group of nonwhite workers had a notably bad reputation in France, it was certainly the Chinese. French authorities often considered them lazy, obstreperous, and particularly prone to violence. See, for example, AN F 14 11331, report of February 8, 1918; SH 17 N 156, letter of May 12, 1918.
223. e siècle (Geneva, 1981), 565-98;
224. Mohamed-Salah Lejri, L'histoire du mouvement national, Vol. 1: Evolution du mouvement national, des origines à la deuxième guerre mondiale (Tunis, 1974), 157-63.
225. John P. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of Moroccan Nationalism, 1912-1944 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 3-40;
226. Douglas Porch, The Conquest of Morocco (New York, 1982). During the war, German agents actively spread pro-Islamic and Ottoman propaganda throughout colonial North Africa, depicting Germany as the ally of the Arab world against the infidel French.
227. In 1916, Germany created a Committee for the Independence of North Africa, based in Berlin, and also supported the anti-French propaganda of the Young Tunisians in Switzerland. Meynier, "La France coloniale de 1914 à 1931," 86.
228. On the history of French labor during World War I, see above all Robert, "Ouvriers."
229. See also Robert, "La CGT et la famille ouvrière, 1914-1918";
230. Fridenson, French Home Front;
231. Patrick Fridenson, "The Impact of the First World War on French Workers," in Wall and Winter, Upheaval of War;
232. Max Gallo, "Quelques aspects de la mentalité et du comportement ouvriers dans les usines de guerre, 1914-1918," Le mouvement social 56 (July-September 1966): 3-33;
233. Horne, Labour at War;
234. Albert Rosmer, Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la première guerre mondiale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1936, 1959);
235. Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français, 2 vols. (Paris, 1964);
236. Kriegel and Jean-Jacques Becker, 1914: La guerre et le mouvement ouvrier français (Paris, 1964);
237. Gilbert Hatry, Renault usine de guerre 1914-1918 (Paris, 1978).
238. For a more general view of working-class radicalism at the end of the war, see Charles Bernard, ed., Situations revolutionnaires en Europe, 1917-1922 = Revolutionary Situations in Europe, 1917-1922 (Montreal, 1977);
239. James E. Cronin, "Labor Insurgency and Class Formation: Comparative Perspectives on the Crisis of 1917-1920 in Europe," in Cronin and Carmen Sirianni, eds., Work, Community and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900-1915 (Philadelphia, 1983).
240. AN 94 AP 135, report of August 16, 1916; ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of August 27, 1916.
241. Humanité (September 4, 1916): 1.
242. SH 7 N 1001, letter from Ahmed ben Haya, April 1917. See also ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of May 28, 1917; and ANSOM, SLOTFOM, carton 8, report of February 1918, for instances of cooperation between French and colonial workers in 1917 and 1918.
243. Guy Pedroncini, Les mutineries de 1917 (Paris, 1967);
244. Leonard V. Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during World War I (Princeton, N.J., 1994).
245. On the strike wave of 1917-1918, see, in addition to works cited above, Kathryn E. Amdur, Syndicalist Legacy: Trade Unions and Politics in Two French Cities in the Era of World War I (Urbana, Ill., 1986), 56-107;
246. Downs, "Women's Strikes."
247. AN F 14 11334, Senator Henry Berenger to the Minister of Labor, July 2, 1917. See also a similar protest by the docker's union of Dunkirk, letter of June 3, 1917.
248. For example, "the opposition of French workers to the employment of [foreign and colonial] labor arises from two motives: wage differences between citizens and immigrants, and racial prejudice. The Interministerial Conference has always, in the contracts it has provided for immigrant workers, provided for equal wages with French workers, thus eliminating this first reason for opposition." AN F 14 11334, report of June 9, 1917. As I have tried to demonstrate, this was certainly not true. See also AN F 14 11334, report of July 7, 1917; AN F 14 11332, letter of December 5, 1919; AN F 7 13619, reports of August 25, 1918, November 20, 1918; SH 6 N 149, letter of January 29, 1918. In February 1918, a censor in Bourges noted that several letters accused foreign workers of contributing to wartime inflation in France by their large numbers. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 1, carton 8, "Contrôle Postal Indochinois," report of February 1918.
249. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 1, carton 8: "Contrôle Postal Malgache," report of February 1918, p. 4.
250. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of May 28, 1917.
251. See the October 1917 report "Moralité, liaisons, projets de mariage," SH 7 N 997.
252. This image of men of color shooting white women, while white men refused, fits into colonialist stereotypes of colonized men as both unmanly and as brutish violators of women. On constructions of masculinity in the colonial context, see Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The "Manly Englishman" and the "Effeminate Bengali" in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester, 1995).
253. Favre, "Un milieu porteur," 2: 508-23. It is interesting that such rumors provoked attacks against colonial workers, not soldiers. The fact that soldiers were frequently armed and therefore a formidable target is of course one possibility. More significantly, whereas the general impression of colonial soldiers was positive, seen as defenders of France against the Germans, that of colonial workers was overwhelmingly negative; rumors of the former shooting strikers did not undo this basic dichotomy.
254. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, reports of June 20, 1917, June 14, 1917; ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, reports of June 19, 1917, July 10, 1917. In an article on the subject, a Paul Adam commented that "soldiers are writing in their letters that the Annamites are massacring their women and children in Paris." Cited in Humanité, September 17, 1917.
255. Favre, "Un milieu porteur," 2: 520-23; AN 94 AP 140, reports of July 5, 1917, July 17, 1917 September 5, 1917; SH 17 N 157, letter of March 2, 1918.
256. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of July 1, 1917. This report raises the intriguing possibility that the refusal of colonial workers to go on strike may have bolstered their reputation among French soldiers, who often viewed the strikes with deep hostility. However, at the same time, it notes that attacks on Indochinese workers by French soldiers seemed to be continuing.
257. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 10, carton 2, report of August 25, 1917.
258. The idea of a dominant sector of the working class viewing a subordinate one as unfair and cheap competition is one of the key themes of split labor market theory. See Bonacich, "Advanced Capitalism."
259. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, Paris, July 10, 1917. One of the ironies of this viewpoint is that many in French society, especially on the right and in the army, tended to look at all men working in the war industries as idle, overpaid embusqués whose militant strikes represented the height of arrogance if not actual treason. On the Mourier law, see the writings of John Horne: "Immigrant workers," 85;
260. "L'Impôt du Sang: Republican Rhetoric and Industrial Warfare in France, 1914-1918," Social History 14 (May 1989): 201-24.
261. ANSOM, SLOTFOM 1, carton 8, "Rapport du Contrôle Postal," July 1917;
262. "Contrôle Postal Indochinois," August 1917; ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, letter of July 10, 1917.
263. The July 1, 1917, report from Saint-Médard notes, "The working women who tried to hinder them [Indochinese workers] from going to work were forced to cede before their resolute attitude." See also ANSOM, SLOTFOM 1, carton 8, "Contrôle Postal Indochinois," August 1917.
264. ANSOM, DSM, carton 5, report of June 19, 1917. One of the more interesting phenomena here is the prospect of women in a traditionally male role (workers in heavy industry) insulting colonial workers by in effect calling them women. On one occasion, for example, a Moroccan sweeping the Boulevard Saint-Michel was accused of performing "women's work" by a group of French men and women. Such incidents are related to a broader wartime discourse that characterized colonial workers as feminine. Such gender-bending stereotypes were most frequently applied to the Indochinese. One report called them "mild and submissive," while another emphasized their aptitude for work requiring dexterity rather than physical force. At the same time, some Frenchmen argued that the use of colonial labor was necessary precisely in order to avoid having to use women in the factories. AN 7 N 144, report of February 20, 1916; AN 94 AP 135, report of August 16, 1916; Pierre Hamp, La France, pays ouvrier (Paris, 1916).
265. On the antiwar and revolutionary minority in the CGT, in addition to works already cited see Maurice Labi, La grande division des travailleurs, 1914-1921 (Paris, 1964);
266. Nicolas Papayanis, "Collaboration and Pacifism in France during World War I," Francia 5 (1977): 425-51;
267. Roger Picard, Le mouvement syndical durant la guerre (Paris, 1927);
268. Colette Chambelland and Jean Maitron, eds., Syndicalisme révolutionnaire et communisme: Les archives de Pierre Monatte, 1914-1924 (Paris, 1968).
269. Cited in Robert, "Ouvriers," 2: 417-18.
270. Favre, "Un milieu porteur," 1: 81-85;
271. Robert, "Ouvriers," 2: 412-19.
272. For example, in January 1918, the metalworkers union in Bourges complained about its members having to train Indochinese workers, "labor of an inferior race." SH 6 N 149, letter of January 29, 1918.
273. See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance in American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York, 1990);
274. Adrian Cook, The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (Lexington, Ky., 1974);
275. James McCague, The Second Rebellion: The Story of the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (New York, 1968).
276. Lucie Cousturier, Des inconnus chez moi (Paris, 1920).
277. As one black soldier commented in a letter to his mother, "These French people don't bother with no color line business. They treat us so good that the only time I ever know I'm colored is when I look in the glass"; cited in W. Allison Sweeney, History of the American Negro in the Great World War (Chicago, 1919), 195. Such reports helped foster the myth of color-blind France after the war.
278. Lunn, "Kande Kamara Speaks," 44-45.
279. Cited in Balesi, From Adversaries to Comrades-in-Arms, 117.
280. As Gilbert Meynier has argued, "The French had, it seems, a rather favorable image of North African soldiers. The image of black Africans evolved: from bad savages, they became good savages."
281. Meynier, "La France colonial de 1914 à 1931," 105.
282. Charles Mangin, La force noire (Paris, 1910).
283. For example, see Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, "Physiognomie de Paris," police report of January 3, 1918, p. 8; January 12, 1918, p. 8.
284. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness; Towards the Abolition of Whiteness; Saxton, Rise and Fall of the White Republic.
285. For example, none of the memoirs of interwar working-class life that I have examined mention whiteness or racial identity. See, among others, Fernand Grenier, Ce bonheur-là (Paris, 1974);
286. René Michaud, J'avais vingt ans (Paris, 1967);
287. Jeanne Bouvier, Mes mémoires, ou 59 années d'activité industrielle, sociale et intellectuelle (Paris, 1983);
288. Laurent Azzano, Mes joyeuses années au faubourg (Paris, 1985);
289. Mrs. Robert Henrey, The Little Madeleine (London, 1951).
290. See also the works of Jacques Valdour, especially Ouvriers parisiens d'après-guerre (Paris, 1921);
291. and Ateliers et taudis de la banlieue de Paris (Paris, 1923).
292. Feminist historians of working-class life have for years demonstrated the ways in which appeals to class solidarity can conceal gender hierarchies. A particularly good example of this is Beatrix Campbell's rereading of George Orwell's classic The Road to Wigan Pier, in Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the Eighties (London, 1984).
293. Some of the historical literature on whiteness tends to attack white workers for racism without sufficiently demonstrating how such groups could be both dominant and subordinate at the same time in the broader context of race and class relations. See, for example, Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995).
294. A January 1920 article in the Bulletin du Ministère du travail justified importing European as opposed to colonial workers after the war in order to avoid bringing an "ethnographically distinct" population onto French soil. Cited in Robert, "Ouvriers," 2: 395.
295. Tyler Stovall is a professor of the history of modern France at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of The Rise of the Paris Red Belt (1990) and Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (1996). His current research interests include labor and urban history, as well as colonial and postcolonial France. Stovall is working on two projects at present: working-class protest and consumerism in Paris at the end of World War I, and migration from the Caribbean to France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.