Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on Malian veterans of twentieth-century French wars, argues that France's and Africa's shared military history continues to animate their political relationship, especially regarding debates about African immigration to France
Trade Review“
Native Sons is an eloquent book about social relationships that spanned centuries and continents, relations between former household slaves and their former masters, between conscripts and commanders, between demobilized veterans and well-off civilian villagers, between veterans and states. These relationships—articulated in idioms of patronage and obligations, rights and republicanism—should make us wary of attaching a ‘post’ to every colony, empire, and nation we talk about.”—Luise White, author of
The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe“Gregory Mann, in this thoughtfully argued and deeply researched book, shows how West Africans who served the French empire in their military careers and in both world wars developed a language of mutual obligation in relation to the state with which the French government had to engage. Following this history of claim-making to the present day, Mann forces us to rethink how we understand such concepts as state, nation, colony, empire, citizenship, welfare, and immigration.”—Frederick Cooper, author of
Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History“In his lucid new study of Malian veterans of the French colonial army, Gregory Mann raises provocative new themes for writing conjoined local, colonial, and postcolonial histories. He has elegantly captured the dense web of human relations, discourses of obligation, and reconfigured social ties that link the dusty town of San (Mali) to the many other outposts of the republican imperial state as well as the postcolonial capitals of Paris and Bamako.”—Alice L. Conklin, author of
A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930“[T]his book is a major contribution to the history of French military recruitment in West Africa. In Mann’s fidelity to his subject, and in reminding us of the connections between the grievances first voiced by anciens combatants and those of African migrants in Europe today, he places us, as with the obligation France owes to the veterans he describes, deeply in his debt.” -- Joe Lunn * Africa Today *
“In this exhaustively researched, meticulously documented, and elegantly written study, Gregory Mann offers a much more nuanced and richly textured history of the numerous, complex, and fluid relationships between West African soldiers and the French, both military and civilian, throughout the twentieth century.” -- Andrew F. Clark * American Historical Review *
“The publication of . . . Mann’s studies suggest new directions in the fields of French colonial history, African studies, and twentieth-century military history. By bringing to light important and overlooked aspects of the imperial dynamic . . . . Mann [has] made meaningful contributions to our understanding of the connections between Europe and Africa and of the legacies of the colonial encounters for both regions.” -- James E. Genova * International History Review *
“This elegantly written study of the complex pattern of ambiguous relationships between France and the West African veterans of the French army is as much about the present as the past. . . . An engaging and compelling history and it leaves the reader with some intriguing issues to chew on.” -- Ineke van Kessel * Leeds African Studies Bulletin *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Soldier Families and Slavery’s Echoes 29
2. Ex-Soldiers as Unruly Clients, 1914–40 63
3. Veterans and the Political Wars of 1940–60 108
4. A Military Culture on the Move: Tirailleurs Senegalais in France, Africa, and Asia 146
5. Blood Debt, Immigrants, and Arguments 183
Conclusion 210
Appendix: Interviews 217
Abbreviations 221
Notes 225
References 295
Index 321
