Africa During the Scramble: A French India

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article here.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Edmund Blyden’s A Christmas Carol, but the ghost of Colonial Futures torments him by reading him Malê Rising.

 

[Omi]

Edmund Blyden’s A Christmas Carol, but the ghost of Colonial Futures torments him by reading him Malê Rising..

Hilarious. I think the Gabon and case would be have been diffrent with the earlier discovery of or a slightly different french regime same applies to Cabinda and Lourenço Marques If Portugal expanded slower

 

[Ricardolindo]

Please, fix the quote.

 

[TR1996]

So, what's the deal with the Vichy government and slavery in Madagascar?

 

[Gary Oswald]

So, what's the deal with the Vichy government and slavery in Madagascar?

Vichy Madagascar was described by French observers as something like Nazi Poland writ small. It's what I'd advise anyone wanting to write about a fascist African colony to look into. One of the first acts of the government was that the 26 jews on the Island were identified, tracked down and locked away.

It's a weird example in the argument about integration because due to being cut off from being France, the officials on the spot formed a creolised autocratic regime with the Merina Chief placed as a Petain like figurehead with the French leaning into a valorisation of Malagasy tradition to justify their oppression.

So slavery was introduced on the theoretical basis that it had existed prior to french rule and so it was a strike against imperalism and colonial oppression to reintroduce it as way of getting free labour. Vichy Madgascar ran on the idea of 'retribalism' and defence of native malagasy culture against foreign liberal influence which in practice was forced segregation. Where as earlier french rulers had encouraged malagasy children to think of themselves as french, under Vichy rule they were taken out of urban schools and sent back to their villages to work the fields.

They even reversed long standing french colonial policy to favour the more 'sophisticated' highland merina and instead favoured the more 'pure and primitive' costal peoples.

But this rhetorical leaning into Malagasy nationalism was a cover for some of the most brutal repression, a complete stripping of any rights and advancement earned within the colonial system and the enslavement of free men.

Vichy France is I think a very good example of the colonial to fascism pipeline. In that so many colonial governors, certainly in Madagascar but also in Guadeloupe took the Fall of France as 'oh, without Paris holding me back, now I'm free to be as ultra conservative as I've wanted to be, yay'. In terms of restrictions on women's work and disenfranchisement of non whites, in particular.

And it was remembered. There simply wasn't an independence movement in Madagascar before ww2 while afterwards, nobody could believe it could end any other way. It showed up the essential vulnerability of the colonial relationship, all the rights the malagasy had ever won were taken away in an instant when the french government changed back home. Once that happens, you can't trust any other rights offered.