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7 Conquest and Cohabitation: French Men’s Relations with West African Women in the 1890s and 1900s
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177 7 Conquest and Cohabitation French Men’s Relations with West African Women in the 1890s and 1900s owen white If there was an “official mind” of French imperialism it was often shaped in relation to unofficial practices, such as the cohabiting unions that countless French men across the empire entered into with local women.1 It is now commonplace to observe that imperial minds had bodily desires ; that they acted upon them, and that imperial policymakers took a more than passing interest in the outcome.2 But as historians of empire have made “the intimate” a topic of inquiry, the encounters that took place between individuals in private tend to remain inscrutable, due to the challenge of finding “intimate” sources. For this reason, while the choices made by the men involved in cohabiting unions may have been subject to official or unofficial judgment (and sometimes still are, under the eye of modern-day historians), it has generally proven difficult to say what these men’s relationships meant to them, and still less what the relationships meant to their female consorts. This essay represents an effort to gain access into the men’s lived experience of cohabiting unions, and in doing so to cast some sliver of light on the intimate workings of “colonial minds.” For Frantz Fanon, writing in Black Skin, White Masks in 1952, relationships between colonizing Europeans and local women could be analyzed straightforwardly. “The white man,” Fanon wrote, “can allow himself the luxury of sleeping with many women,” and “especially in Colonial Minds and Empire Soldiers 178 colonies,” because “he is the master.” Fanon dismissed the claim made by the psychologist Octave Mannoni that when Joseph-Simon Gallieni’s troops “pacified” Madagascar in the 1890s, the “more or less temporary ” marriages they made at the same time with Malagasy women “presented no difficulties at all,” because Malagasy sex life was open, easy, and “unmarred by complexes.” Fanon disagreed, or rather found Mannoni’s judgment irrelevant: what did it matter if Malagasy society was sexually accommodating? In a situation where male entitlement was magnified by a sense of racial superiority, “when a soldier of the conquering army went to bed with a young Malagasy girl, there was undoubtedly no tendency on his part to respect her entity as another person .”3 These conquerors would scarcely have taken “no” for an answer. For Fanon, these relationships—the word is almost too delicate for his argument—represented another category of the violence of imperial conquest. But the men involved had minds as well as bodies; orders to carry out, but also individual consciences that could be troubled. In the minds of at least some French men, attempting to explain their actions either to others or to themselves, they were not simply conquerors, of territory or of women. The unequal power relations that Fanon identi- fied allowed French men to initiate relationships in ways that would not have been true in France. But for many, making their way in an unfamiliar environment, emotional vulnerability was a counterpart to their power. This essay looks at relationships between French men and “colonized ” women in a particular region in a particular time, namely French West Africa in the 1890s and 1900s. The period was one of transitions, as, from 1895, a civilian government-general for the French West African federation gradually established its authority, while the military influence that had accompanied the conquest and ensuing “pacification” progressively waned.4 (Madagascar underwent its own move toward civilian rule under Gallieni’s governorship between 1896 and 1905.) During this time, particularly in the regions into which the French had recently expanded, relationships between French men and African women were still more the norm than the exception they would later become. While it is easy enough to find references to the fact that such relationships took place—as well as the circumstantial evidence represented [18.209.69.180] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:52 GMT) Conquest and Cohabitation 179 by métis (mixed-race) children—it is much harder to get any sense of what they meant for the individuals involved. Africanists have recently begun the difficult but important task of considering the implications of such relationships for African women.5 The focus of this essay is more on French men, as a handful of sources—private letters, unpublished diaries—that are more intimate than official documents or the standard soldier’s or...