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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33.4 (2003) 682-684



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Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944. By Eric T. Jennings (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001) 311pp. $55.00


This original, timely, and finely crafted comparative study of French colonial policies and ethnic relations during the second quarter of the twentieth century represents a significant contribution to colonial cultural history. Vichy in the Tropics examines the interplay between French ideology, colonial policies, and indigenous cultural practices inthree French colonies—Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and French Indochina. Jennings finds that the overseas exportation of the French government's authoritarian National Revolution had unanticipated, anddifferent, consequences in each context: "It would appear that Vichy officials inadvertently created a setting in which their own reductionist ideologies, folkloric nostalgia, and a language of particularism were actually turned against them" (3). As the author rightly claims, this work provides the first sustained comparative analysis of Vichy's colonial policies.1

The colonies investigated were selected for their distinct historical trajectories and their shared insulation from "possible Nazi presence" (6). This remoteness, Jennings argues, makes it possible to evaluate the [End Page 682] colonial impact and indigenous response to policies associated with Vichy's National Revolution. Guadeloupe represents an ancien régime colony where the inhabitants "benefited from full-fledged Republican rule" and resisted programs "equated with a return to prerepublican autocratic rule" (7). French Indochina, a colony dating from the late nineteenth century, reveals how the ideals of the national revolution could be appropriated by Communist and Nationalist anticolonial agendas. Madagascar serves to illustrate how a pre-existing dissident movement, "largely confined to demands for assimilation and equal rights," responded to Vichy's heavy-handed measures by evolving, first, into a nationalist movement and, then, following the return of French republican/colonial rule, into an insurrection (6-7).

Jennings describes how French colonial authorities eagerly embraced and spontaneously administered Vichy's conservative ideological program of work, nation, and family.2 They pushed already harsh colonial regimes into an overtly authoritarian, pro-Catholic, antidemocratic, antiracial assimilationist, anti-Semitic, and sexist constellation designed to promote Vichy's survival.3 The author identifies how colonial elites exploited indigenous beliefs and traditions to usurp political authority for themselves by, among other things, insinuating colonial rule into the schema of Madagascar's monarchical traditions; coopting and ruling through the existing crowns and mandarins of Laos, Annam, and Cambodia; and reversing the electoral rights previously granted to Guadaloupeans in order to replace democratically elected mayors with selected prefects.

Jennings' original research employs an impressive array of archival materials in French and English from France, Guadeloupe, Vietnam, Madagascar, Britain, and the United States—official colonial documents and correspondence, contemporary journals, books, newspapers, and pamphlets. In addition, the work's critical perspective both engages and further develops current colonial and postcolonial theory. Engaging prose and good organization make this book accessible to specialists and general readers alike. [End Page 683]

Following a synoptic introduction, four chapters provide succinct overviews of the pertinent political and cultural histories of Vichy France and the three colonies in question. These chapters also discuss the polemics that inform Vichy and French Colonial historiography. Jennings then illustrates, in complementary chapters for each colony, how his research challenges, refines, and advances a sophisticated cultural approach to French colonial history. A final chapter combines the author's historical insights and comparative methodology to reveal how Vichy linked "imperial myths and viable ancient indigenous customs" to efface objectionable reminders of republicanism and promote itself (226, 210). Vichy supporters staged festivals and orchestrated ceremonies that entailed "the wholesale invention and production of 'authentic folklore,' the introduction of hard-line colonial practices, and an overriding rhetoric of imperial unity" (225-226). Accordingly, May Day celebrated labor under corporatist management; Legion Day commemorated the unity of the colonial empire; and Joan of Arc Day incarnated "Greater France's" collective identity.

Interdisciplinary historians will immediately recognize Jennings' substantial cultural contribution to Vichy's neglected colonial history.4 More broadly, Vichy in the...

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