23 - Quotidian Violence in the French Empire, 1890–1940

Summary

Historians of violence in the French Empire have focused primarily on official agents of the state, such as soldiers, policemen, judges, and administrators. Violence perpetrated by non-state actors – that is, by European settlers, merchants, and travelers – remain far less explored in the historiography of French colonialism. In important ways, brutality perpetrated by non-state actors helped perpetuate the Manichean dynamics of colonialism so powerfully described by colonial and post-colonial critics alike. The prevalence of violence suggests that quotidian brutality was central to settlers’ sense of power and identity in regions where they felt under constant threat from larger non-European populations. This chapter examines how civilian mistreatment of colonial populations often differed starkly from the state’s efforts to legitimate its own use of violence in military, administrative, and judicial capacities. Indeed, such daily acts of violence were potentially threatening to the French power. They undermined administrative control of French citizens and destabilized what were often delicate balances of power between officials and subject populations. Equally important, uncontrolled violence jeopardized the central rhetorical claim that colonization brought rationalism and civilization to allegedly less-developed societies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.