Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960 (Oxford Historical Monographs) Review

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Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960 (Oxford Historical Monographs) ReviewAs many academics and progressives have noted, Western logic is filled with rigid dichotomies: good/bad, black/white, powerful/powerless, Christian/"heathen", male/female, virtue/vice. In this book, Dr. White shows how the French struggled to deal with the children of African women and the French men that impregnated them and left. What to do with people that are black and white? Can we deem them black OR white? Can we put them in middle-management jobs and give them limited power? What will the Africans say when we made all these babies but talk about celibacy as a Christian, European virtue in a condescending manner to them? These are all areas that Dr. White tries to uncover.
Through no fault of the author's, this book is painful to read in many instances. It's filled with all these eugenicist comments about mixed-race people being infertile and sickly with no evidence to back it up. Though the Africans are not enslaved as in the Americas, they are still treated as less than human. Dr. White briefly comments that though biracial children were under the care of clergy, they were also in lice-infested quarters where tuberculosis and other diseases were rampant. Honestly, I think the chapter on eugenics should have come before the chapters on orphanages and employment. As worthy as this book is, be prepared to be upset.
Please also note that this book is a top-down discussion: the ideas of white Frenchmen is the focus, not the concerns of Africans, whether biracial or monoracial. On the one hand, the French probably left a lot of evidence in their bureaucratic files for Dr. White to uncover. Further, their ideas are the ones rich with academic and policy-based analysis. Dr. White's tenure board may want to see all of that. Nevertheless, we are speaking of a period when many Africans, again both monoracial and biracial, could read, write, and be expressive for themselves. This book suggests that there were many m'etis societies and then never says much about them. I am not sure whether to fault the author, but I do think other academics have plenty of room to pick up where he left off.
In the United States' earlier years, interracial sex was rarely consensual, usually involving the rape of black women by white male masters. Antimiscegenation laws and unpunished lynchings then deterred much race-mixing. In this book, however, Dr. White shows how race-mixing was mutually beneficial. African women served as translators for French men and taught them how to survive in the hot environment. This unoppressive joining of two groups is so different from the United States, at least historically, that it almost seems novel.
I doubt that this is a translated text. Though based in Britain, Dr. White must be fluent in French and was knowledgeable about France and Francophone West Africa. His strong cross-cultural wisdom shines throughout the book.
Francophiles will love this book. It's filled with accented French names and fancy-sounding French social organizations. Unfortunately, some of French's exoticism is lost as words in names are smashed together and letters get put in the lower case. When LeRoux becomes Leroux and de la Vignette becomes Delavignette, it just doesn't feel like the French that excited me in junior high school.
At least in African-American studies texts, many phenomena start in West Africa and make their way to the "New World." However, Dr. White illustrates how the gray area of multiraciality was not solved in West Africa until late in the 20th Century. That controversy was solved centuries ago in the Caribbean and in the United States with its hypodescent rule (i.e., "one drop of black blood makes you black"). This book was a first for me where patterns were reversed.
This book should be read alongside many others. Dr. White freely admits that Ann Stoler has covered the French on their Eurasian children and that Hyam has wrote about sexuality in the British Empire. This book covered whites in Africa, but if you want to know about blacks in France, see Stovall's "Paris Noir." Robert Aldrich discusses colonialism and homosexuality in his powerful book.
This book is a must-read for those interested in multiracial people or mixed-race couples. It will truly make you want to learn more on the various subjects it presents.Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960 (Oxford Historical Monographs) OverviewThis book vividly recreates the lives and identities of the children born of relationships between French men and African women in colonial French West Africa. It shows how colonial policies and attitudes influenced the lives of this mixed-race population and analyzes their responses to living in a racially divided society.

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