Representation or Recuperation? The French Colonies and 1914–1918 War Memorials

Abstract

In 1993 and 1996 respectively, France erected memorials to the Jewish victims of the ‘rafle du Vel d’Hiv’ (16 July 1942) and to her Algerian war dead (1954–62). Largely unremarked between these events was the bronze group unveiled on the seafront at Fréjus in 1994 to the ‘Black Army’ which fought for the mother country in two world wars and whose members, in Léopold Sédar Senghor’s injunction to the passer-by, ‘fell as brothers that you might remain French’ (‘sont tombés fraternellement unis pour que to restes Français’). The choice of location was doubly appropriate, Fréjus having been since 1915 the main entry-point and metropolitan HQ for colonial troops from French Equatorial and French West Africa (AEF and AOF) as well as Indochina. Detachments of the latter built the Hông-Hien pagoda there in 1917, which was used as a garrison place of worship and has latterly become a garrison memorial (‘lieu de mémoire’). Coincidentally but not inappropriately, Fréjus was also the summer residence of Gallieni, before Mangin the best-known commander of the colonial troops, whose wife was from the town.