Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship

Author:   Rachel Jean-Baptiste (University of California, Davis)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781108489041


Pages:   292
Publication Date:   08 June 2023
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship


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Overview

Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands of children. These children, mostly born to African women and European men, sparked significant debate in French society about the status of multiracial people, debates historians have termed 'the métis problem.' Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research in Gabon, Republic of Congo, Senegal, and France, Rachel Jean-Baptiste investigates the fluctuating identities of métis. Crucially, she centres claims by métis themselves to access French social and citizenship rights amidst the refusal by fathers to recognize their lineage, and in the context of changing African racial thought and practice. In this original history of race-making, belonging, and rights, Jean-Baptiste demonstrates the diverse ways in which métis individuals and collectives carved out visions of racial belonging as children and citizens in Africa, Europe, and internationally.

Full Product Details

Author:   Rachel Jean-Baptiste (University of California, Davis)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.630kg
ISBN:  

9781108489041


ISBN 10:   1108489044
Pages:   292
Publication Date:   08 June 2023
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Multiracial identities and the consolidation and subversion of racialized French colonial rule in French west and equatorial Africa, ca. 1900–1930; 2. Wards of the state: claiming and mediating colonial government welfare and French institutional care of multiracial children in the 1930s; 3. 'I am French': multiraciality and citizenship in FWA and FEA, ca. 1928–38; 4. 'Odd notions of race': reconfiguring rights of/to citizenship and children, 1939–ca. 1950; 5. The reconfiguration of maternal and child welfare in Dakar, 1949–1956: Nicolas Rigonaux and the Union of Eurafricans; 6. Multiracial internationalism: racial equality, universal rights, and just Eurafrican futures, 1957–1960; Epilogue.

Reviews

'This wonderful book opens up the question of race in Africa in two ways: departing from colonial visions of métissage, it follows instead how multiracial Africans themselves lived, conceived, and debated their identities in the French empire. Secondly, Jean-Baptiste demonstrates that local actors acted first and foremost as global thinkers, inventing forms of multiracial internationalism that still matter enormously today.' Florence Bernault, Center for History, Science Po 'Rachel Jean-Baptiste's study of racially mixed people in colonial French Africa is not just the story of the making of a category but of the men and women who inhabited it, who tried to make their lives within a colonial racial order, and who acted collectively to challenge that order. Her deeply researched account brings out the ambiguous and contested meanings of race, colonialism, citizenship, and community.' Frederick Cooper, New York University 'This is a pathbreaking book that expands the history of childhood and race in Africa and rethinks our methods for studying intimacy and emotions. With case studies drawn from diverse archives, Jean-Baptiste combines a discussion of state welfare policy with attention to children's rights and considers colonial sexualities from the point of view of Africans.' Stephanie Newell, Yale University


Author Information

Rachel Jean-Baptiste is Associate Professor of history at the University of California, Davis. She has previously published Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon (2014), as well as articles in edited books and academic journals. She is co-president of the Coordinating Council for Women in History and serves on the boards of the African Studies Association and the UK editorial collective of Gender and History.

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