Networks of Knowledge: Ethnology and Civilization in French North and West Africa, 1844-1961
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Networks of Knowledge: Ethnology and Civilization in French North and West Africa, 1844-1961 by Douglas William Leonard Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ William Reddy, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Alex Roland, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Laurent Dubois ___________________________ Bruce Hall ___________________________ Engseng Ho Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 ABSTRACT Networks of Knowledge: Ethnology and Civilization in French North and West Africa, 1844-1961 by Douglas William Leonard Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ William Reddy, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Alex Roland, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Laurent Dubois ___________________________ Bruce Hall ___________________________ Engseng Ho An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright by Douglas William Leonard 2012 The views expressed in this dissertation are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. Abstract The second French colonial empire (1830-1962) challenged soldiers, scholars, and administrators to understand societies radically different from their own so as to govern them better. Overlooking the contributions of many of these colonial officials, most historians have located the genesis of the French social theory used to understand these differences in the hallowed halls of Parisian universities and research institutes. This dissertation instead argues that colonial experience and study drove metropolitan theory. Through a contextualized examination of the published and unpublished writings and correspondence of key thinkers who bridged the notional metropolitan-colonial divide, this dissertation reveals intellectual networks that produced knowledge of societies in North and West Africa and contemplated the nature of colonial rule. From General Louis Faidherbe in the 1840s to politician Jacques Soustelle and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1950s, a succession of soldiers and administrators engaged in dialogue with their symbiotic colonial sources to translate indigenous ideas for a metropolitan audience and humanize French rule in Africa. Developing ideas in part from a reading of native African written and oral sources, these particular colonial thinkers conceived of social structure and race in civilizational terms, placing peoples along a temporally-anchored developmental continuum that promised advancement along a unique pathway if nurtured by a properly adapted program of Western intervention. This perspective differed significantly from the theories proposed by social scientists such as Emile Durkheim, who described ―primitivity‖ as a stage in a unilinear process of social evolution. French African political and social structures incorporated elements of iv this intellectual direction by the mid-twentieth century, culminating in the attempt by Jacques Soustelle to govern Algeria with the assistance of ethnological institutions. At the same time, Pierre Bourdieu built on French ethnological ideas in an empirically grounded and personally contingent alternative to the dominant structuralist sociological and anthropological perspective in France. Approached as an interdisciplinary study, this dissertation considers colonial knowledge from a number of different angles. First, it is a history of French African ethnology viewed through a biographical and microhistorical lens. Thus, it reintroduces the variance in the methods and interpretations employed by individual scholars and administrators that was a very real part of both scientific investigation and colonial rule. Race, civilization, and progress were not absolutes; definitions and sometimes applications of these terms varied according to local and personal socio-cultural context. This study also considers the evolution of French social theory from a novel perspective, that of the amateur fieldworker in the colonies. Far from passive recipients of metropolitan thought, these men (and sometimes women) actively shaped metropolitan ideas on basic social structure and interaction as they emerged. In the French science de l‘homme, intellectual innovation came not always from academics in stuffy rooms, but instead from direct interaction and dialogue with the subjects of study themselves. v Dedication For Cara and Katie, who keep me smiling. vi Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ xi Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Louis Faidherbe and the Construction of a Civilizational Paradigm .............. 56 Chapter 2: Martial Ethnology: Hubert Lyautey, Moral Renewal, and Soldiers as Agents of Reform ........................................................................................................................ 114 Chapter 3: Maurice Delafosse, Paul Marty, and the Acquisition of Knowledge in West Africa .............................................................................................................................. 185 Chapter 4: Shaping Views: Delafosse, Marty, and the Description of African Civilization ......................................................................................................................................... 245 Chapter 5: Escaping Durkheim: Marcel Mauss, the Field, and Social Structure ........... 314 Chapter 6: Jacques Soustelle and Ethnological Government in Algeria ........................ 381 Chapter 7: ‗La sociologie est un sport de combat‘: Pierre Bourdieu and the Inheritance of French African Ethnology............................................................................................... 458 Conclusion: Ethnological Past as Prologue .................................................................... 527 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 552 Biography ........................................................................................................................ 605 vii List of Figures Figure 1: North Africa in 1854 ...................................................................................................... 54 Figure 2: West Africa in 1889, as depicted by Louis Faidherbe .................................................... 55 Figure 3: Indochina in 1895, as depicted by Jean-Marie de Lanessan ......................................... 111 Figure 4: Madagascar in 1901 ...................................................................................................... 112 Figure 5: North Africa in 1913 .................................................................................................... 113 Figure 6: Africa in 1922, as depicted by Maurice Delafosse ....................................................... 183 Figure 7: Official French Map of West Africa in 1922 ............................................................... 184 viii List of Abbreviations ACG – Archives, Cercle de Goundam AEF – l‘Afrique equatoriale française ALN – Armée de libération nationale AN – Archives nationales de France ANOM – Archives nationales d‘outre-mer ANS – Archives nationales de Sénégal AOF – l‘Afrique occidentale française AP – Archives privées APC – Archives privées des colonies APOM – Archives privées d‘outre-mer AS – Année Sociologique CNRS – Conseil national de recherche scientifique CPI – conseil de politique indigène EHEM – école des hautes études musulmanes ENS – école normale supérieure EPHE – école pratique des hautes études FLN – Front de libération nationale GGA – Gouvernement général d‘Algérie IE – Institut d‘ethnologie, Université de Paris IFAN – Institut français d‘Afrique noire IHEM – Institut des hautes études marocaines IMEC – Institut mémoires d‘édition contemporaine ix JOM – Journal officiel de Madagascar LVB – Archives Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Collège de France MAS – Archives Marcel Mauss, Collège de France MET – Musée d‘ethnographie du Trocadéro MH – Musée de l‘homme MNHN – Muséum national d‘histoire naturelle OAA – Officiers des affaires algériennes OAS – Organisation d‘armée secrete REI – Revue des études islamiques SAS – sections administrative spécialisées SAU – Sections administratives urbaines SHD – Société historique de la défense SLNA – Service des liaisons nord-africains TF – tarikh el-fettach TS – tarikh es-soudan UN – United Nations WWI – First World War WWII – Second World War x Acknowledgements I could never have completed this dissertation without the continued support of family, friends, colleagues