Networking: Freemasons and the colonial state in French West Africa, 1895-1914

French History

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 91-111

  White, Owen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33846026108     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/cri002     Document Type: Review

References (113)

1. For a key sociological study of networks see M.S. Granovetter, 'The strength of weak ties', Am J Soc, 78 (1973), 1360-80;
2. also idem, 'The strength of weak ties: a network theory revisited', Sociological Theory, 1 (1983), 201-33.
3. These themes are clearly set out in J.R. Home, A social laboratory for modern France: The Musée Social and the rise of the welfare state (Durham, N.C., 2002), pp. 104-6.
4. Though now a fashionable subject among social scientists, the significance of networks in general has yet to establish itself as a methodological focus among historians of the French empire. In the following works, however, the importance of networks is either explicitly or implicitly acknowledged (this brief and selective list is intended only to highlight a rarely noted theme, and is not based on a systematic literature survey): C.-R. Ageron, France coloniale on parti colonial? (1978);
5. S.M. Persell, The French colonial lobby 1889-1938 (Stanford, Calif., 1983);
6. J.R. Home, 'In pursuit of greater France: Visions of empire among Musée Social reformers, 1894-1931', in J. Clancy-Smith and F. Gouda (eds.), Domesticating the empire: Race, gender, and family life in French and Dutch colonialism (Charlottesville, 1998), pp. 21-42;
7. W.B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire: The French colonial service in Africa (Stanford, 1971);
8. E. Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l'Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France 1878-1930(2002);
9. F. Manchuelle, Willing migrants: Soninke labor diasporas, 1848-1960 (Athens, Ohio, 1997);
10. C. Liauzu, Aux origines des tiers-mondismes: colonisés et anti-colonialistes en France (1919-1939) (1982);
11. P. Zinoman, The colonial Bastille: A history of imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 (Berkeley, 2001);
12. C.E. Goscha, Thailand and the southeast Asian networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885-1954 (Richmond, VA, 1999)
13. The only general history of freemasonry in the French Empire is G. Odo, La franc-maçonnerie dans les colonies 1738-I960 (2001); this is a brief masonic publication, useful especially for the data it provides on lodges in the colonies. Two informative works on a more limited period are
14. e cycle, Université d'Aix-en-Provence, 1971), and
15. B. Boisneau, 'La franc-maçonnerie et les problèmes coloniaux de 1914 à 1939 (Mémoire de Maîtrise, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1990).
16. P. Nord, The republican moment: Struggles for democracy in nineteenth-century France (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), p. 15.
17. See for example M. Headings, French freemasonry under the Third Republic (Baltimore, Md, 1949), p. 70.
18. This is true of two otherwise path-breaking works on colonial governance and ideology, A.L. Conklin, A mission to civilize: The republican idea of empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford, 1997), and Cohen, Rulers of empire.
19. J.P. Daughton's 'The civilizing mission: missionaries, colonialists, and French identity, 1885-1914' (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2002) helps to fill the gap.
20. The most notable incumbent of the post who was not a mason during this period was Jules Brévié, governor-general from 1930 to 1936. Brévié's opposition to freemasonry can be supposed from his willingness to serve as Colonial Minister under the Vichy regime between 1942 and 1943, leading to his trial after the Liberation. Details on prominent masons in the empire can be found in, for example, 'La Franc-maçonnerie et l'empire', Les documents maçonniques (an anti-masonic journal from the Vichy era, reprinted by Editions du Dragon, Monaco, 1998), no. 4, January 1943, 102-11. Vichy's anti-masonic tendencies, which led to the denunciation and persecution of French masons, were not confined to metropolitan France: the Vichy administration in French West Africa, for example, published lists of masons in the administration and placed restrictions on their employment, as 'well as dissolving local lodges. See Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS), Fonds Modeme, 17G 109;
21. C. Akpo-Vaché, L'AOF et la seconde guerre mondiale (1996), p. 57;
22. G. Odo, La francmaçonnerie en Afrique francophone 1781-2000 (2000), p. 59.
23. On Vichy and masons elsewhere in the empire see J. Dalloz, Francs-macons d'Indochine 1868-1975 (2002), pp. 80-2;
24. E. Jennings, Vichy in the tropics: Pétain's national revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944 (Stanford, Calif, 2001), pp. 47-8, 96-7.
25. Useful studies of freemasonry in other parts of the French empire include, on Algeria, X. Yacono, Un siècle de franc-maçonnerie algérienne (I785-1884) (1969)
26. and L. Sabah, La francmaçonnerie à Oran de 1832 à 1914 (1989);
27. e République (1999);
28. on Indochina, Dalloz, Francs-maçons d'Indochine 1868-1975.
29. M. Larkin, 'Fraternity, solidarity, sociability: The grass roots of the Grand Orient de France (1900-1926)' in S. Hazareesingh (ed.), The Jacobin legacy in modern France, Essays in honour of Vincent Wright (Oxford, 2002), pp. 89-114;
30. D.L.L. Parry, 'Friends in high places: The favours sought by the freemasons of Orléans, 1890-1914', Fr Hist, 12(1998), 195-212.
31. S. Hazareesingh and V. Wright, Francs-Maçons sous le Second Empire: les loges provinciales dn Grand-Orient à la veille de la Troisième République (Rennes, 2001), pp. 25, 26-7.
32. Odo, La franc-maçonnerie dans les colonies, pp. 72-3;
33. Odo, La franc-maçonnerie en Afrique francophone, p. 28;
34. A. Combes, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie au XIXe siècle, 2 vols. (Monaco, 1999), ii. 398-9.
35. For example see CM. Andrew and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, France overseas: The Great War and the climax of French imperial expansion (1981), Ch. 1, though many historians now argue that the empire occupied a more prominent place in the public consciousness, as in T. Chafer and A. Sackur (eds.), Promoting the colonial idea: propaganda and visions of empire in France (Basingstoke, 2002).
36. M. Larkin, 'Fraternity, solidarity, sociability, is especially useful on the extent and activity of freemasonry in metropolitan France in the early twentieth century.
37. On freemasonry in Saint-Louis before 1900 see G. Odo, 'Les quatre Loges de Saint-Louis du Sénégal de 1781 à 1899', Chroniques d'Histoire Maçonnique, 42 (1989), 11-26.
38. In French Equatorial Africa there was an active lodge in Brazzaville from 1904; see M. Boussicaud, 'Eglises et franc-maçonnerie au Congo de 1900 à nos jours' (Thèse de doctorat, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1995-6) and M.-H. Rumeau, 'La loge maçonnique 'L'Aurore du Congo' du 1904 à 1940' (Mémoire de Maîtrise, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1989). On freemasonry in a British West African territory see A. Casely-Hayford and R. Rathbone, 'Politics, families and freemasonry in the colonial Gold Coast', in J.F.A. Ajayi and J.D.Y. Peel (eds.), People and empires in African history (Harlow, 1992), pp. 143-60.
39. e siecle, ii. 390-1, states that Grand Orient membership went from 21,670 in 1903 to 30,044 in 1908.
40. Archives du Grand Orient de France, rue Cadet, Paris (GODF) 1138, compte rendu of lodge meeting of 12 August 1909 and tableau from 1909. The three masonic grades are apprenti, compagnon, and maître.
41. This lodge, provisionally named 'Union et Concorde du Dahomey', met briefly in 1907, but the Grand Orient rejected its application for authorization. See G.O. Midiohouan, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie au Bénin (Cotonou, 1998), pp. 19-21.
42. M. Pierre Mollier, librarian at Grand Orient headquarters in rue Cadet; also GODF 242, 'France et Colonies' (Paris) to GODF, 3 June 1907.
43. GODF 1138, 'Les Amis du Soudan' to GODF, 16 May 1911.
44. Dalloz notes a similar tendency in Indochina; Francs-maçons d'Indochine, p. 42. Perhaps the best-known administrator attached to a West African lodge was Robert Amaud, one of the architects of French Islamic policy in AOF. As of 1904 Amaud belonged to a lodge in his native Algiers, but he attained the grade of compagnon at 'L'Etoile Occidentale' in Dakar in November 1912 (GODF 984). The ethnographer Franz de Zeltner was for a time associated with the lodge in Kayes (GODF 1138). On Arnaud and de Zeltner see Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l'Afrique?, pp. 278-9, 318-20.
45. Figures for Saint-Louis in GODF 1829, GODF to 'L'Avenir du Sénégal', 27 Feb. 1907, clarified by 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 1 April 1907. In 1900 the lodge in Saint-Louis had 29 active members (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, rue de Richelieu, Fonds Maçonnique (BNF), Rés FM2 153). In 1923 the number was back to 27 (GODF 1833).
46. GODF 1138, membership tableau from 1909.
47. BNF FM Impr. 2520, Règlement particulier of 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' (Saint-Louis, 1895).
48. All information in this paragraph drawn from GODF 982 bis, 983, 984, 1138, 1829, 1833. Dalloz reveals similar membership patterns in the lodges in Indochina; Francs-maçons d'Indochine, pp. 35-6.
49. On Kayes and the railways in AOF see J.A. Jones, Industrial labor in the colonial world: Workers of the Chemin de Fer Dakar-Niger, 1881-1963 (Portsmouth, N.H., 2002), pp. 24-5.
50. GODF 1833, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 15 December 1911; also see the list from 1910 of masons in the colonial army in Robinard, 'La franc-maçonnerie et la colonisation', pp. 243-5.
51. Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Vincennes, 1K 161, carton 1, diary of Lt. Robert Altmayer, entry from 4 August 1903 The affaire des fiches that broke in 1904, in which the War Minister General André was found to have used informers supplied by the Grand Orient de France to monitor the beliefs and behaviour of army officers, contributing to the downfall of the freemason Émile Combes' ministry, doubtless confirmed all of Altmayer's worst fears; his father was among those investigated. On the affaire des fiches see F. Vindé, L'affaire des fiches, 1900-1904: chronique d'un scandale (1989); M. Larkin, Religion, politics and preferment in France since 1890 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 39-52.
52. See Nord, The republican moment, pp. 25, 29.
53. Odo, 'Les quatre Loges de Saint-Louis', shows that some of Saint-Louis' most prominent métis families, such as Crespin, Pellegrin and Devès, were represented in the lodges.
54. e siècle, ii. 404, states that in 1907 he joined the Parisian lodge 'Cosmos'.) The other two initiates were Biran Sady, a commercial employee, and Mamadou Racine, a captain in the tirailleurs séné galais. The lodge 'Union Sénégalaise' disbanded in 1893.
55. Similarly, J. Dalloz writes that lodges in Indochina were 'hostile' to indigenous membership before World War One, though some Vietnamese joined lodges in France; see 'Les Vietnamiens dans la franc-maçonnerie coloniale', Rev Fr Hist Outre-Mer, 85 (1998), 104.
56. GODF 984, 'L'Etoile Occidentale' to GODF, 17 February 1906.
57. GODF 1829, 'L'Avenirdu Sénégal' to GODF, 19 January' 1906: also Odo, La franc-maçonnerle en Afrique francophone, pp. 52-3. On the Grand Orient's conditions for membership
58. see Larkin, 'Fraternity, solidarity, sociability', p. 97.
59. Odo states that this African absence from the lodges continued throughout the colonial period; La franc-maçonnerie en Afrique francophone, p. 52. In the first decades of the twentieth century the prominent Senegalese politician Blaise Diagne was attached successively to lodges in Réunion, Madagascar, French Guiana and Paris, but never to a lodge in Senegal. On Diagnes masonic career see F. Zeller, 'Blaise Diagne: premier homme politique sénégalais, franc-maçon et humaniste', Humanisme: Revue des Francs-Maçons du Grand Orient de France (March-April 1973), 32-9;
60. J.-L. Domergue, Blaise Diagne (1872-1934)', Humanisme, June 1994, 56-8.
61. On freemasonry s place in the early part of Diagnes political career see G.W. Johnson, The emergence of black politics in Senegal. The struggle for power in the four communes (Stanford, Calif., 1971), pp. 156, 170, 205. A lodge was named after Diagne in Dakar in 1976, but his relationship with masons in Senegal had often been fractious; during an election campaign in 1925, masons in Saint-Louis alleged that Diagne, though a mason of long standing and the first non-white member of the Grand Orients conseil de l'ordre, was exploiting anti-masonic sentiment in campaign posters.
62. See GODF 1833, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 1 June 1925.
63. Parry, 'Friends in high places', 196;
64. On Ponty's career see G.W. Johnson, 'William Ponty and republican paternalism in French West Africa (1866-1915)", in L.H. Gann and P. Duignan (eds.), African proconsuls: European governors in Africa (New York, 1978), pp. 127-56. From 1899 to 1904 Ponty was technically the governor-general's delegate in Kayes, but his functions were effectively those of a governor.
65. Conklin, A mission to civilize, pp. 107-41.
66. Information on Ponty's masonic career supplied to me by M. Pierre Mollier at the GODF. Two future governors-general of French West Africa, Martial Merlin and Marcel de Coppet, were also for a time attached to the lodge 'Les Inséparables du Progrès'. The influence of the lodge 'France et Colonies', founded in 1899, merits further research. Several prominent members of the colonial lobby in France were masons, Eugène Etienne being the most notable example (Odo, La franc-maçonnerie dans les colonies, pp. 73-5). Another lodge dedicated to thinking about colonial matters (though less well connected than 'France et Colonies') was 'L'Expansion Française', on which see W. Guéraiche, 'L'Expansion Française (1904-1939): entre mémoire et histoire', Chroniques d'Histoire Maçonnique, 48 (1997), 64-71.
67. For example Johnson, 'William Ponty', p. 132
68. C. Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860-1960 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 56.
69. GODF 982 bis, 'Les Pionniers du Niger' (Conakry) to GODF, letters from 17 October 1909, 14 March 1910. Zanettacci ended up at the médersa (Islamic school) in Saint-Louis (Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa, p. 66). Joucla, a procureur de la République based in Senegal, is better known to historians of French West Africa as the compiler of a bibliography of works on the federation.
70. GODF 982 bis, conseil de l'ordre to 'Les Pionniers du Niger', 6 October 1909. This reminder followed a meeting that lodge members had with Ponty as he toured Guinea in 1909 (lodge to GODF, 28 April 1909, 18 August 1909).
71. Headings, French freemasonry under the Third Republic, pp. 80, 82.
72. GODF 1138, 'Les Amis du Soudan' to GODF, 13 June 1911: 'Les Amis du Soudan' to brother Vadecard, 2 October 1911: minister of colonies to brother Masse, deputy of the Nièvre, 8 January 1912; 'Les Amis du Soudan' to GODF, 10 March 1912.
73. See e.g. P. Chevallier, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie française, 3 vols. (1974-5), ii. 549-50.
74. GODF 983, report on depopulation by 'L'Etoile Occidental' read at GODF convention of 4 November 1901.
75. see M. Klein, Slavery and colonial rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 61-4.
76. Klein, Slavery and colonial rude, pp. 126-7.
77. BNF Rés. FM2 153, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal", tableaux, 1894-1900, showing that Allys was Vénérable in 1894 and again in 1898; quotation from Klein, Slavery and colonial rule, p. 134. See also D. Robinson, Paths of accommodation: Muslim societies and French colonial authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880-1920 (Athens, Ohio, 2000), p. 72, and p. 265 n. 66, showing that Allys was still a mason in 1904.
78. GODF 242 ('France et Colonies'), Bourgine and Emile Baduel to M. Lafferre (Vénérable of 'France et Colonies'), 7 January 1905. Bourgine and Baduel, both members of 'France et Colonies', had recently resigned from the lodge in Saint-Louis. In GODF 1829, Cornu to Président du conseil de l'ordre, 25 October 1904, Cornu dismissed allegations made in the metropolitan newspaper L'Action that slavery was 'a flourishing industry' in Senegal.
79. This precedent was established in the affaire Prom, on which see Klein, Slavery and colonial rule, pp. 131-2: GODF 242, Bourgine and Baduel to Lafferre, 7 January 1905. Following this affaire, in October 1903 the lodge in Saint-Louis adopted a report on slavery compiled by Bourgine, Baduel, Joucla, and another lawyer, Dunand-Henry (GODF 1829). On slavery in Saint-Louis at this time
80. see also J.F. Searing, 'God alone is King': Islam and emancipation in Senegal. The Wolof kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859-1914 (Portsmouth, N.H., 2002), pp. 159-61.
81. GODF 1829, Marius Leclerc to GODF, 24 October 1905; 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 7 December 1905. Leclerc was a member of the lodge in 1895 (BNF Rés FM2 153).
82. GODF 242, 'France et Colonies', Bourgine and Baduel to Lafferre, 7 January 1905. 58 GODF 983, report by L. de Poyen Bellisle, 4 June 1904.
83. GODF 983, 'L'EtoileOccidentale' (Dakar) to GODF, 20 March 1904.
84. GODF 983, 'L'Etoile Occidental to GODF, 26 March 1904.
85. Ballay was held to represent an improvement on Chaudié, at least to the extent that masons no longer feared being 'spied on' and 'harassed': GODF 242, 'France et Colonies', Bourgine and Baduel to Lafferre, 7 January 1905. Chaudié held the post from June 1895 to November 1900, Ballay from November 1900 until his death in January 1902.
86. GODF 1829, Cornu to conseil de l'ordre du GODF, 19 February 1904;
87. also 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 5 April 1904.
88. Archives des Pères Blancs, Rome, 074 041, Mgr. Bazin to Père Livinhac, 15 November 1902.
89. On French Catholic views of masons at the time see G. Cubitt, 'Catholics versus freemasons in late nineteenth-century France', in F. Tallett and N. Atkin (eds.), Religion, society and politics in France since 1789(1991), pp. 121-36.
90. For a study of laicization in France see M.O. Partin, Waldeck-Rousseau, Combes, and the Church: The politics of anti-clericalism, 1899-1905 (Durham, N.C., 1969).
91. On laicization in the French Soudan see J.-R. de Benoist, Eglise et pouvoir colonial au Soudan français: adtninistrateurs et missionnaires dans la Boucle du Niger (1885-1945) (1987), pp. 111-46.
92. On Guinea see G. Vieira, Sous le signe du laïcat: documents pour l'histoire de l'église Catholique en Guinée (Dakar, 1992), pp. 197-202.
93. See Robinson, Paths of accommodation, pp. 101-2.
94. 'Obsèques de M.V. Duval', Journal Officiel du Séné gal et Dépendances, 4 July 1903, 387-8. Masons in attendance heard one of their opponents say: 'I gave my dog a civil burial, too' (GODF 1829, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 15 September 1903).
95. See esp. GODF 983, 23-page report by L. Poyen de Bellisle, 4 June 1904.
96. See ANS 17G 36, Guy to Roume, 14 April 1904, where Guy noted that the congregations had given service in the past, but changing times required their removal; also Johnson, The emergence of black politics in Senegal, p. 140.
97. GODF 242, 'France et Colonies', Alexis Cornu to Adolphe Bourgine, 18 February 1904, refers to Guy's disquiet about the campaign against him. For more on Guy see R. Cornevin, 'Camille Guy (1860-1929)', Hommes et destins, vol. 5 (1984), pp. 238-39;
98. J.F. Searing, 'Accommodation and resistance: chiefs, Muslim leaders, and politicians in colonial Senegal, 1890-1934' (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1985), pp. 177-8.
99. ANS 17G 36, Guy to Roume, 11 July 1904, stating that all religious emblems had been removed some months ago (though the lodge in Saint-Louis complained that the military hospital in the town still had not removed them in late 1904: GODF 1829, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 6 December 1904); ANS 17G 36, Guy to Roume, 23 April 1904, describing a visitation to Guy's office of Senegalese Catholics hoping to preserve education by religious orders. See also D. Bouche, L'enseignement dans les territoires français de l'Afrique Occidentale de 1817 à 1920 (1975), p. 487.
100. ANS J83, Guy to Roume, 18 June 1905; GODF 242, 'France et Colonies', Cornu to Bourgine, 18 February 1904.
101. Searing, 'Accommodation and resistance', pp. 177-8.
102. See especially the correspondence between Alexis Cornu and Adolphe Bourgine in GODF 242; also Bourgine and Baduel to conseil de l'ordre, 7 January 1905, extending the criticism to Roume, whom they accused of blocking laicization with 'the most complete inertia'.
103. See O. White, Children of the French empire: Miscegenation and colonial society in French West Africa 1895-1960 (Oxford, 1999), p. 48.
104. GODF 1833, Vénérable Cornu to secrétaire général du GODF, 25 January 1911.
105. GODF 1833, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to conseil de l'ordre du GODF, 20 March 1911.
106. ANS, 17G 35, Roume to Ministre des Colonies, 26 May 1906: same to same, 17 May 1907.
107. GODF 1138, speech by Brother Sisco at lodge meeting of 12 August 1909. The lodge in Conakry reported a similar problem (GODF 982 bis, 'Les Pionniers du Niger' to GODF, 28 December 1911);
108. See GODF 983, 'L'Etoile Occidental to GODF 25 April 1905; GODF 1829, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal', adjournment of applications by Paul Mahoux and Antony Alexis, 10 and 12 September 1906.
109. GODF 982 bis, 'Les Pionniers du Niger' to GODF, 28 December 1911; on Patronage Catholique-an officially authorized body-see lodge to GODF, 18 August 1909. The conseil de l'ordre of the Grand Orient de France finally pronounced the mise en sommeil of the Conakry lodge in July 1913- A new lodge attached to the Grand Loge de France opened in Conakry in 1916; see Odo, La franc-maçonnerie en Afrique, p. 31
110. Dalloz points to similar divisions among masons in Indochina; Franc-maçons d'Indochine, p. 44.
111. Respectively MM. Cor, Angoulvant, Ponty and Brunet (shortly followed by Doumergue). Peuvergne in Guinea was also esteemed by masons (GODF 1833, Cornu to secrétaire général du GODF, 25 January 1911).
112. GODF 1833, 'L'Avenir du Sénégal' to GODF, 13 March 1912. Dalloz likewise notes frustration with 'masonic proconsuls' in Indochina: Francs-maçons d'Indochine, p. 39.
113. Compare S. Hazareesingh and V. Wright, Francs-Maçons sons le Second Empire, for example p. 186, which emphasizes the diversity of masonic opinion around a set of broadly accepted principles.