In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 “An Extremely Dangerous Suspect”: From Vichy-Era Travails to Postwar Triumph When the music changes, the dance changes. —Hausa proverb By the late 1930s, SIM’s persistent attempts to gain spiritual purchase in the Hausa-speaking region finally appeared to be showing results. In Nigeria, the mission had taken over the Kano and Katsina leper settlements from the government and had constructed a third settlement at Sokoto; the leprosy work was immediately “fruitful,” making it likely that the mission would push to open further leprosaria and medical stations in Nigeria and Niger (Beacham 1940, 3). The translation work was also showing measurable results: 1,144 Hausa Bibles had been sold, in addition to 810 New Testaments, 32,283 readers, and 3,711 hymnbooks (Beacham 1939, 3). Plans to expand the mission’s stations were afoot in 1940, despite the war in Europe, and the colonial government in Niger appeared to be receptive: “The Governor of Niger Colony was passing through Maradi and Mr. and Mrs. Osborne were able to have an informal interview with him. The Governor assured Mr. Osborne that the SIM could purchase a certain plot and house in Maradi, put up temporary buildings in Jiratawa, and that he was also willing to let us occupy Diapaga” (Kapp 1940, 19). There is something surreal in the cheerful reportage of the mission’s publications of the early war period , suggesting that the mission staff of North Americans, Canadians, and a New Zealander was more than a little out of sync with the fears and preoccupations of most Europeans and the French. The mission’s oblivion to the impact of the war and its implications “An Extremely Dangerous Suspect” / 225 for continued evangelism was short lived, however. With the fall of France and the Franco-German Armistice of June 22, 1940, the political landscape in French West Africa was thrown into great confusion. Any effort to retake France from outside her borders, whether led from Britain or from North Africa, would be heavily reliant on the overseas territories for soldiers, matériel, food supplies, and moral support. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that Niger, along with the rest of the Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF), would rally to the Free French in support of de Gaulle. After the announcement of the armistice, some elements of the military in Niger rejected capitulation and envisaged joining Allied forces in Dakar or Nigeria (Akpo-Vaché 1996, 28).1 By August 1940, Felix Éboué had decided to lend the weight of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Équatoriale Francaise, or AEF) to the support of de Gaulle; if all of the AOF had followed suit, the bloc of African colonies would have become the backbone of the French resistance forces. As it happened, Gouverneur-General Pierre Boisson saw the rallying of the AEF in support of de Gaulle as a betrayal. For him, the primary duty of France’s overseas administrators was to maintain the cohesion of the French empire and prevent any further erosion of France’s position (Akpo-Vaché 1996, 37). It would be unfair to label Boisson as pro-Nazi, although he would be vilified as such after the war. A veteran of World War I, he had little sympathy for Hitler’s Germany, but, like many soldiers of his generation, he was deeply loyal to Maréchal Pétain (Akpo-Vaché 1996, 32). He was also wedded to a military hierarchy and incapable of imagining any kind of autonomous decision-making capacity within France’s African territories . Pétain’s understanding of the colonies, which he eventually referred to explicitly as the French “empire,” was that they would be the guarantor of France’s ultimate sovereignty and independence from Germany (48). So long as the overseas territories could be protected from German intrusion, they could serve as a conduit for American goods into France. The Vichy policy toward the AOF was to hold Germany at bay while attempting to sustain and cultivate economic links to the United States, which was at that point neutral (49). Anything that might cut off metropolitan France from the prestige and resources of the empire, then, was seen as a threat to the very survival of France as a sovereign nation. Boisson decided to back Pétain and forestall the emergence of an African bloc on July 6, 1940. It was a complex and difficult decision to make and one that was necessarily tempered by the sense of embattlement...

Share