Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris

Notes

223 notes Introduction 1. caom, slotfom II/21, Agent Joé, May 5, 1931. 2. caom, slotfom II/21, Agent Joé, May 28, 1931. Agent Joé’s words, and his entire story, can be considered examples of what James Scott calls a hidden transcript, which “consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript.” James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1990), 4–5. 3. Along with Philippe Dewitte, James Spiegler and Martin Steins produced foundational works based on this particular archival series and black anti-imperialism in general. More recently Brent Hayes Edwards has used slotfom sources to investigate anti-imperialism’s roots across the Atlantic, Gary Wilder to argue that France was an imperial nationstate and to explore colonial humanism, and Christopher Miller to locate the roots of negritude in the racial awareness of 1920s workers. Philippe Dewitte, Les Mouvements nègres en France 1919–1939 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985); Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation , and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 2003); Christopher L. Miller, Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998); James Spiegler, “Aspects of Nationalist Thought among French-Speaking West Africans, 1921–1939” (Oxford University, 1968), Martin Steins, “Les antécédents et la génèse de la Négritude senghorienne” (Université de Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1980); Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 4. Numerous works have shaped and guided this book in important 224 Notes to pages xv–xvii ways. Early on, the following ones inspired this gendered and racial reading of Paris as a colonial space: Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927, Women in Culture and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Tyler Edward Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996). On Paris, see also Jean-Paul Brunet, SaintDenis la ville rouge: Socialisme et communisme en banlieue ouvrière 1890– 1939 (Paris: Hachette, 1980); Annie Fourcaut, Bobigny, banlieue rouge (Paris: Les Editions Ouvrières et Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1986); Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge ma: Belknap, 2002); Benjamin Stora, “Les Algériens dans le Paris de l’entre-deux-guerres,”in Le Paris des étrangers depuis un siècle, ed. André Kaspi and Antoine Marès (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1989). 5. Scholars who have confronted police archives with literary works by black men and women include Edwards, Practice of Diaspora; Wilder, Imperial Nation-State. 6. On soldiers see Marc Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre: L’appel à l’Afrique (1914–1918) (Paris: Karthala, 2003), 191–97. Colonial workers, who were mostly recruited in China and Indochina, ended up numbering approximately 300,000. The number of workers from French West Africa was quite small, but 4,546 Malagasies were mobilized as colonial workers. Tyler Edward Stovall, “The Color Line Behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France during the Great War,” The American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (1998): 741–42. 7. The breakdown of soldiers and workers from various colonies reveals that substantial numbers of colonial men were brought to France during the war. Most of the 500,000 colonial soldiers (for eight million Frenchmen) ended up fighting in France. Between 1914 and 1918, the French mobilized 166,000 West Africans, 46,000 Malagasies, 50,000 Indochinese , 140,000 Algerians, 47,000 Tunisians, and 24,300 Moroccans. French West Africans provided more recruits than any other colony. Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918, War/Society/Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 2, 26–27, 298n1. On France’s colonial soldiers and workers during World War I see also Charles John Balesi, From Adversaries to Comrades-in-Arms: West Africans and the French Military, 1885–1918 (Waltham ma: 1979); Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth nh: Heine- Notes to pages xvii–xxii 225 mann, 1991); Mar Fall, Les Africains noirs en France: des tirailleurs sénégalais aux . . . blacks (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986); Joe Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese...