Overview

Following tirailleurs senegalais' deployments in West Africa, Congo, Madagascar, North Africa, Syria-Lebanon, Vietnam, and Algeria from the 1880s to 1962, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how African servicemen advanced conjugal strategies with women at home and abroad. Sarah J. Zimmerman examines the evolution of women's conjugal relationships with West African colonial soldiers to show how the sexuality, gender, and exploitation of women were fundamental to the violent colonial expansion and the everyday operation of colonial rule in modern French Empire. These conjugal behaviors became military marital traditions that normalized the intimate manifestation of colonial power in social reproduction across the empire. Soldiers' cross-colonial and interracial households formed at the intersection of race and sexuality outside the colonizer/colonized binary. Militarizing Marriage uses contemporary feminist scholarship on militarism and violence to portray how the subjugation of women was indispensable to military conquest and colonial rule.

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9780821424223

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Reviews

An original, significant contribution to the field of African history, Zimmerman's thoroughly researched and insightful study on French colonial marital traditions discusses how the conjugal relationships between West African tirailleurs senegalais soldiers and local women over Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia-and their resulting mixed-race children-represented a challenge to the French colonial racial hierarchy -- Tim Stapleton, author of Africa: War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century Militarizing Marriage's focus on African soldiers' conjugal unions, households, and trans-imperial sexual relationships adds exciting new dimensions to the historiography of colonial militaries and their roles in imperial conquest, occupation, as well as in the world wars. -- Michelle R. Moyd, author of Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa A groundbreaking work of scholarship [that] contributes to a wide range of literatures. These include feminist scholarship on gender and militarism in Africa, the extensive historiography on African colonial militaries, and the historical literature of women's roles in Western European armies.... Not only a significant and sophisticated contribution to the historical literature on the tirailleurs senegalais and other African colonial armies but also to the growing literature on gender and militarism in Africa. Due to its temporal, geographic, and thematic scope, it will be of interest to scholars of African, global, and military history. -- Lennart Bolliger, author of Apartheid's Black Soldiers: Military Collaboration and Transnational Armies in Southern Africa

An original, significant contribution to the field of African History, Zimmerman's thoroughly researched and insightful study on French colonial martial traditions discusses how the conjugal relationships between West African tirailleurs senegalais soldiers and local women over Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia-and their resulting mixed-race children-represented a challenge to the French colonial racial hierarchy -- Tim Stapleton, author of Africa: War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century Militarizing Marriage's focus on African soldiers' conjugal unions, households, and trans-imperial sexual relationships adds exciting new dimensions to the historiography of colonial militaries and their roles in imperial conquest, occupation, as well as in the world wars. -- Michelle R. Moyd, author of Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa

Author Information

Sarah J. Zimmerman is an associate professor in history at Western Washington University. Her research focuses on the experiences of women and the operation of gender in West Africa and French Empire. She has published articles in the International Journal of African Historical Studies and Les Temps modernes.

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