{"title":"Blood for Equality: African Soldiers' Struggles for Rights after World War II","authors":"Ruth Ginio","doi":"10.3138/TTR.40.1.81","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The existing literature on the Tirailleurs Sénégalais focuses mainly on the participation of African colonial soldiers in the two world wars, on the discrimination they suffered in the army, and on French ingratitude towards them after independence. While all of these issues are important, my aim in this article is to examine the tirailleurs' struggles for rights in the aftermath of WWII, with a particular focus on their agency and ability to shape their own destiny. I begin by discussing the tirailleurs' spontaneous revolts and protests that erupted at demobilization. I then examine the much more calculated struggle of the main veterans' journal in French West Africa, La Voix des combattants, to advance the veterans' aims in the post-war decades. Lastly, I explore a particular case of struggle for equality waged by African veterans: the district guards' fight for better conditions in Ivory Coast and Senegal in the mid-1950s. With these three examples, I demonstrate that the tirailleurs were not just helpless victims of an exploitative colonial system, but also managed to win equality within the army by invoking the sacrifices they had made for France during the two world wars.","PeriodicalId":41972,"journal":{"name":"Tocqueville Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"101 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tocqueville Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3138/TTR.40.1.81","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:The existing literature on the Tirailleurs Sénégalais focuses mainly on the participation of African colonial soldiers in the two world wars, on the discrimination they suffered in the army, and on French ingratitude towards them after independence. While all of these issues are important, my aim in this article is to examine the tirailleurs' struggles for rights in the aftermath of WWII, with a particular focus on their agency and ability to shape their own destiny. I begin by discussing the tirailleurs' spontaneous revolts and protests that erupted at demobilization. I then examine the much more calculated struggle of the main veterans' journal in French West Africa, La Voix des combattants, to advance the veterans' aims in the post-war decades. Lastly, I explore a particular case of struggle for equality waged by African veterans: the district guards' fight for better conditions in Ivory Coast and Senegal in the mid-1950s. With these three examples, I demonstrate that the tirailleurs were not just helpless victims of an exploitative colonial system, but also managed to win equality within the army by invoking the sacrifices they had made for France during the two world wars.
摘要:现有关于Sénégalais的文献主要集中在非洲殖民地士兵参与两次世界大战、他们在军队中遭受的歧视以及法国独立后对他们的忘恩负义。虽然所有这些问题都很重要,但我在这篇文章中的目的是研究二战后提拉勒人的权利斗争,特别关注他们塑造自己命运的机构和能力。我首先讨论提拉勒人在复员时爆发的自发起义和抗议活动。然后,我研究了法属西非的主要退伍军人杂志《战斗之声》(La Voix des fightants)为推动退伍军人在战后几十年的目标而进行的更为深思熟虑的斗争。最后,我探讨了非洲退伍军人为争取平等而进行的一个特殊案例:20世纪50年代中期,地区警卫在科特迪瓦和塞内加尔为改善条件而进行的斗争。通过这三个例子,我证明了蒂赖勒人不仅是剥削性殖民制度的无助受害者,而且还通过援引他们在两次世界大战期间为法国做出的牺牲,在军队中赢得了平等。