Reading Information
Fogarty, “Chapter Six: Race, Sex, and Imperial Anxieties” in Race and War
Overview
Relationships between the indigenes and French began widespread during the early 20th century often producing mixed race children. These relations challenged the preexisting racial hierarchy that essentially defined colonial rule. Interracial sex became a political front that needed to be regulated and policed by French authorities. Officials would put out reports discouraging these relationships, but their effects of their efforts were limited. The interracial relationships disrupted the ideology upon which the French empire rested on. The expansion of contact between the French and the colonized people alarmed French officials because it meant that the scope of disorder was also expanding. The color line, a boundary between the white Europeans and nonwhite colonial subjects, instilled by the French to maintain order, was being blurred through these relationships. This created a colonial anxiety over the difficulties of using the indigene troops in the war. Asking men whom they saw as inferior, to fight with them side by side in the same uniform, for the same nation, made the French officials nervous of losing their control over these colonized men.
Keywords
- sex
- color line
- wartime anxieties
Argument
This chapter argues that interracial sex and relationships became a significant problem to imperial ideology, blurring racial hierarchy and inducing a colonial anxiety in French officials.
Evidence
“In the end, the report recommended discretely warning women and families of the risks they were running by welcoming colonial men into their homes, beds, and hearts.” (Fogarty, 224)
“They violated the dualistic racial and cultural opposing upon which colonialism depended.” (Fogarty, 229)
“If that distancing disappeared, then so would colonialism, the French empire, power, prestige, and much else that mattered to very much to the French officials.” (Fogarty, 229)
Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule
This chapter solidifies my current understanding of colonial rule. Imperialism’s foundation is rested upon having two separate identities: the superior colonizers and the inferior colonized population. France sought to maintain very specific racial hierarchy in order to maintain their power and authority within their colonies. However, allowing the French to have intimate relations with the Indigenes, contradicted the ideology that was the foundation of France’s imperial power. This made French authorities anxious. Mixed race children became another complicated issue. Should they be accepted as French? Should they be given citizenship? Or should they be susceptible to the same treatment as the colonized? This analysis by Fogarty illuminated how important it was for the French to maintain inequality in their colonies.