Attitudes to Gender and Race in France During World War One
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Attitudes to Gender and Race in France during World War One Joshua Cockburn UMI Number: U584062 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U584062 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Prifysgol Cymru Summary of Thesis University of Wales This summary sheet should be completed by the candidate after having read the notes overleaf. The completed sheet should be submitted by the candidate to his/her Head of Department/School together with two copies o f the thesis, two copies of the Notice of Candidature form and a certificate regarding financial obligations/matriculation. Candidate’s Surname.. ............... Institution/College at which study pursued Candidate’s Forenames.. ................................ Candidate for the Degree o f .. .... (MPhil or PhD) Full title of thesis.. J&.yT. i.TSA ... tafc*. ............... ?N .. .ffepS.N JUfk. J> S^. >*ASr.. V f t ................................ Summary: This thesis examines the impact that the First World War had on French thinking about race and gender. It argues ideas about those two categories were strongly linked at the time. It argues that the often dramatic changes o f the war were understood within a framework o f pre-war ideas which helped to both determine and explain the behaviour of different sexes and different races during the conflict. These ideas were adaptable and sometimes contradictory which allowed them to be utilised to describe changing circumstances in ways that did not undermine traditional thinking. While there was uncertainty over the categories o f gender and race during the war, it largely followed the pattern o f pre-war debates and resulted in little more disruption to established ideas than those debates had. DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed... ^ . .. .. ^77777777 .................................. Date.... Qbrfe-i.! ............................... STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit reference. A bibliography is appended. Signed... .2^7.. TTTTT.............................. Date... I'.9 3 . 5 .............................. STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ^ 7 7 ...< Date...... Acknowledgements The completion of a PhD would not have been possible without the help of numerous people. Firstly, I’d like to thank my supervisor, Kevin Passmore, for his friendly and patient assistance. I’d also like to thank the History department at Cardiff University for providing a supportive environment, and in particular Padma Anagol and Garthine Walker for their encouragement. I am also grateful for the assistance of the staffs of the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Archives nationals, and the British Library. I was also helped hugely by various friends, directly and indirectly. In particular: Alison Binns, Bryany Cusens, Mair Rigby and Rachel Bowen all offered help beyond mere friendship. I’m also grateful to Kalyn Wilson for her proof-reading efforts, and in particular her valiant (if often fruitless) attempts to purge out the passive voice and to Marie Baldovini for her advice on particularly tricky French phrases. Last, but emphatically not least, I’d like to thank my family, without whose financial and emotional support I’d never have embarked on this project, far less completed it. In particular, my parents, my brother, John and Kathleen Reilly and Phyllis Cockbum all deserve special thanks. This thesis is dedicated to Margaret Skelton Cockbum, who I’m sure would have been inordinately proud. Contents Introduction p. 2 Chapter 1 The Racial Other p. 21 Chapter 2 Race and Nationality p. 83 Chapter 3 World War One and G ender Relations p. 141 Chapter 4 Gender, Race and Employment p. 211 Conclusion P 293 Bibliography P 303 l Introduction In May 1917, a police report in Le Havre stated that a common sentiment in the munitions factory there was that If this continues, there will not be any men left in France; so why are we fighting? So that Chinese, Arabs, or Spaniards can marry our wives and daughters and share out the France for which we’ll all, sooner or later, get ourselves killed at the front.1 The police concluded that this attitude demonstrated jealousy of both foreign workers and allied soldiers. Not only does the statement betray a fear of a loss of national identity; it also provides evidence of the sexual insecurity that was prevalent during the war. The French feared that women’s new found independence would lead to the abandonment of their husbands. For the soldiers at the front there was the added factor of long-term separation from their wives and girlfriends while they risked their lives on a daily basis. This meant that their loved ones were often unable to comprehend the suffering on the front, shielded as they were by distance and censorship. In 1918, Dr Louis Fiaux, a social reformer and expert on prostitution, described the social crisis that he perceived had resulted from the movement of so many French men to the frontlines. Quelles consequences ne devaient point avoir ces exodes d’hommes par masses, ces delaissements equivalents des femmes. Ces innombrables foyers familiaux rompus et disperses, les hommes maries redevenus celibataires, les jeunes gens non maries eloignes de leurs habitudes de cceur ou de leurs arrangements, les circonstances du celibat viril comme les conditions ordinaires de la prostitution feminine bouleversees, sans omettre tous les vides incertains, tous les vides definitifs laisses a l’arriere par les prisonniers, les disparus et les morts de l’avant, sans oublier surtout la crise economique de gene et de misere s’abattant sur les femmes du proletariat reduites par milliers et milliers aux plus insuffisantes ressources, quelque intelligente et humaine que soit l’intervention des secours publics. A 1 John N. Home, “Immigrant Workers in France during World War I” in French Historical Studies 14- 1 (Spring 1985) , p. 85. 2 1’ensemble et aux details de ce trop veridique tableau, comment s’etonner de ce bouleversement des moeurs?2 A M. Marchetti, speaking in 1919 at a veterans meeting in Marseille, lamented that while the soldiers were fighting, “d’autres a l’arriere, parmi lesquels beaucoup d’etrangers, s’enrichissaient scandaleusement a nos depens.”3 These quotations describe a world where dislocation caused by war resulted in comprehensive disturbance of social norms. The absence of many of France’s men had created a space that could potentially be filled by women and foreigners performing roles that were not those conventionally expected of them. The question addressed here is whether this dislocation resulted in any significant changes in how French society perceived women and foreigners, or whether existing discourses on gender, race and nationality survived the turmoil of the war. The destruction and disruption caused in Europe by the Great War was vast, and the imprint it left in politics and individual consciousness was longstanding. For Eric Hobsbawm the war “marked the breakdown of the (western) civilization of the nineteenth century.”4 The idea of the war as marking a decisive shift in history is a staple of the historiography of the period, often with substantial justification. The debates over gender, nationality and race have been no different. Historians have demonstrated that attitudes towards race and gender are an essential constitutive element of any society. The French believed that the governments and citizens of foreign countries acted in ways determined by their racial and national characteristics; this belief shaped relations between France and its neighbours. The growing presence of foreigners on French soil only emphasised the importance of this issue. There were now individuals living in France whose motivation and morality were believed to be not just different from the French, but potentially capable of undermining France’s own national characteristics. Meanwhile there was scarcely a 2 Louis Fiaux, L ’Armee et la Police des Moeurs, Paris: Libraire Felix Alcan (1918) p. vi. 3 AN F/7/13243, 17 March, 1919. 4 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes; The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991. St Ives: Abacus (1995) p. 6. 3 relationship of any sort in France that was not moulded by both accepted and contested gender relations. My conception o f gender relations is similar to that expressed by Denise Riley where she defines “women” as historically, discursively constructed and always relative to other categories that themselves change; “women” is a volatile collectivity in which female persons can be very differently positioned, so that the apparent continuity o f the subject of “women” isn’t to be relied upon;5 Amongst the “other categories” that Riley mentions, race is a primary example. French racial thinking had little, if any, basis in any objective reality, but was constructed amongst an accumulation of discourses arising from myriad scientific theories, arbitrary designations, geo-political history and simple prejudice. The huge variety of discourses in politics, in literature, in the press, in art, in everyday conversation, that served to construct the categories of gender and race inevitably led to a variety of perceptions towards those categories.