Of Couscous and Control

Notes1. Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, carton 10H446, speech at reception for 1953 Hajjis. The French Army's historical service (hereafter referred to as SHAT), a branch of the Ministry of Defense's larger historical organization, is based at the Chateau de Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. It possesses substantial archives on the history of the French Army from approximately the Thirty Years’ War to the present day. Series 10H (Indochina) comprises around 4,000 cartons of information. The archives pertaining to Muslim soldiers in Indochina, which the author had the privilege of examining in June 2006, are the basis for this article. The documents are numbered, and most come from the following series: État‐Major Interarmées et des Forces Terrestres (EMIFT), Guerre Psychologique (GP), and Affaires Militaires Musulmanes (AMM). Other series designations will be explained only if necessary. All translations of archival documents are those of the author. 2. SHAT, carton 10H446, menu for 1954 Hajjis’ feast. 3. Ibid., n° 1434/EMIFT/GP/AMM du 8 Avril 1954. 4. Michel Bodin, “Les troupes nord‐africaines en Indochine (1947–1954),” Revue historique des armées 3 (2000): 35. The position of the Bureau of Muslim Soldier Affairs in the army hierarchy was fairly independent: falling under the Bureau of Psychological Warfare, which was directly beneath the General Staff for Land Forces, the AMM was only two echelons removed from the Indochina high command.5. In both French colonial discourse and academic commentary on nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century imperialism, the terms “metropolitan” and “metropole” are frequently used to refer to the mother country, in this case France. 6. Driss Maghraoui, “Moroccan colonial troops: History, memory and the culture of French colonialism” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Cruz, 2000), 60. 7. Moshe Gershovich, French Military Rule in Morocco: Colonialism and Its Consequences (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005), 175. 8. It is worth noting the meaning of these words: tirailleurs means, literally, “trigger‐pullers.” The word Spahis descended from the Turkish word for the old Ottoman heavy cavalry regiments, but by the Indochina war French Spahis units had become armored cavalry outfits. Goums were locally recruited rural gendarme units at first; the word has Arabic roots. 9. Gershovich, 176. 10. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 42. 11. Gershovich, 192. 12. See Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994). 13. Bodin, “Les troupes nord‐africaines en Indochine (1947–1954),” 36. 14. Ibid., 36. 15. As tirailleurs made up the great majority of North African troops in Indochina, I will hereinafter use that label to refer to North Africans in general. 16. Bodin and Vaudable are both affiliated with the Service Historique de la Défense at Vincennes, from whose archives most of the primary documents used in this article are culled. Bodin's articles in Revue Historique des Armées and Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains are both cited in this article. Pierre Vaudable's Fidèles a Leurs Engagements: les Soldats Algériens Participent à la Guerre d’Indochine in ADA 280, 2003:74–77. 17. Several important works have been published on these subjects in both English and French. Moshe Gershovich's French Military Rule in Morocco devotes an informative chapter to French use of Moroccan troops. Christophe Cazorla wrote a valuable 2002 article in the Revue Historique des Armées on the employment and evolution of the Harkis and other Algerian troops in the Algerian war, while Ali Hadjar's book La Chair à Canon provides a much‐needed North African perspective on the Algerian tirailleurs. 18. See Nelcya Delanoe, Poussières d’Empires (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). 19. SHAT, carton 10H446, n° 628/EMIFT/1/AMM du 3 Mai 1952. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., carton 10H419. Report on AMM visits to French units in South Indochina, 18 February 1949. 22. Ibid., Annex on familial allocations, 1st trimester 1951. 23. Ibid., carton 10H446, n° 2307/EMIFT/I/AMM du 1 Octobre 1951. 24. Ibid., carton 10H418, n° 1509/FAEO/ORG/AMM du 1 Juillet 1950. 25. Called Eid al‐Fitr in standard Arabic. Eid al‐Seghir is a North African name for the holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The French command also brought in special rations for the celebration of Eid al‐Kabir (or Eid al‐Adha in standard Arabic), which commemorates Ibrahim's near‐sacrifice of his son Isma’il. 26. Bodin, “D’une guerre à l’autre: l’évolution de l’état d’esprit des soldats algériens (1947–1956),” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 45 (1995): 170.27. SHAT, carton 10H446, n° 211/EMIFT/GP/AMM du 20 Août 1953. 28. Ibid., carton 10H419, n° 3/CFTCV/3/AMM du 4 Janvier 1952. 29. Ibid., n° 219.ZOT/CAB du 1er trimestre 1950. Several different rumors swirl around the origins of the name “pieds noirs” or black feet, a universally adopted term for the ethnic European residents of Algeria. Everything from severe sunburn to coal dust at Algeria's ports has been pinpointed as the root of the term. 30. Bodin, “D’une guerre à l’autre,” 171. 31. SHAT, carton 10H419, n° 358/FTSV/2.AMM du 15 Juillet 1952. 32. Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole, 1994), 132–36. Still the standard text on the experience of French Union soldiers in the Indochina War, Fall's book provides an informative and colorful description of the Indochina BMCs. 33. SHAT, carton 10H419, Groupe de Transport 801/n° 1/EM/CDT du 29 Décembre 1949. 34. Ibid., carton 10H418, n° 1509/FAEO/ORG/AMM du 1 Juillet 1950. 35. Ibid., carton 10H418, n° 1824/FAEO du 5 Juillet 1950. 36. Ibid., carton 10H446, speech at reception for 1953 Hajjis. All translations done by the author. 37. Matt Matsuda, Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4. 38. SHAT, carton 10H446, speech at reception for 1954 Hajjis. 39. Ibid., n° 2140/EMIFT/1/AMM du 22 Août 1951. 40. Ibid., Speech given for Radio‐France‐Asie by Capitaine Mouloud Iddir, 9 August 1951. 41. See Matsuda, Empire of Love. 42. SHAT., carton 10H446, n° 1434/EMIFT/GP/AMM du 8 Avril 1954. 43. Ibid., carton 10H446, n° 279/EMIFT/GP/AMM du 26 Janvier 1954. 44. Ibid., carton 10H446, n° 279/EMIFT/GP/AMM du 26 Janvier 1954. 45. For all the information on recruitment patterns in North Africa, see Bodin, Soldats d’Indochine (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1997), particularly 94–97, 123–26, and 153–54. 46. Bodin, “Les troupes nord‐africaines en Indochine (1947–1954),” 37. 47. Delanoë, 51. 48. SHAT, carton 10H419, n° 1415/FTNV/CG/AMM du 15 Avril 1952. 49. Dwight L. Ling, Morocco and Tunisia: A Comparative History (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979), 97. 50. SHAT, carton 10H419, n° 1415/FTNV/CG/AMM du 15 Avril 1952. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., carton 10H446, n° 2307/EMIFT/1/AMM du 1 Octobre 1951. 53. Ibid., n° 1407/EMIFT/1/AMM du 5 Décembre 1952. 54. Ibid., carton 10H419, n° 357/CAB.MIL/AMM du 13 Avril 1953. 55. Ibid., n° 1415/FTNV/CG/AMM du 15 Avril 1952. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid., n° 1415/AMM/IS du 18 Février 1949. 58. Ibid., n° 4622/SSDN/FA/G/EO du 13 Juillet 1955. Note: this is not an AMM document; it is rather an internal memorandum of the French Secret Service. 59. Ibid., n° 4829/Cab/AMM du 21 Octobre 1954. Note: the Istiqlal and Hizb movements were Moroccan independence movements, with the former being bigger and more influential. See Ling, Morocco and Tunisia, for more information. 60. Meaning “North African's Corner,” this brochure was decorated at the top with pictures of majestic Atlas peaks, a sword‐wielding nineteenth‐century Spahis cavalryman on an Arabian horse, and a curved cavalryman's lance. It also featured advertisements for North African cafés and similar institutions. 61. SHAT, carton 10H446, n° 260/EMIFT/GP/AMM du 23 Janvier 1954. 62. SHAT, carton 10H511, list of effectives and losses. 63. At Mao Khé, 400 Thô tribesmen, Senegalese Infantry, and Moroccan cavalrymen, later reinforced by a French paratroop battalion, withstood an attack by three Viet Minh divisions. For a full account of this electrifying battle and many others in which North Africans participated, see Fall, Street Without Joy. Mao Khé is covered in pages 41–43. 64. Bodin, “Les troupes nord‐africaines en Indochine (1947–1954),” 40. 65. Numerous FLN leaders had seen service in the French Army; Ahmed Ben Bella himself (one of the FLN's founding members and the first president of independent Algeria) had earned a Croix de Guerre during the World War II Italian Campaign. 66. Christophe Cazorla, “Concept d’Emploi et Évolution Statuaire des Supplétifs durant la Guerre d’Algérie,” Revue Historique des Armées 4 (2002): 69. 67. Horne, 443. 68. See Maurice Challe, Notre Révolte (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1968): 421–41. General Challe provides an appendix that details numerous eyewitness accounts of torture and murder visited upon former French servicemen and their families. Additional informationNotes on contributorsEthan M. OrwinEthan Orwin is a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and is currently pursuing a Masters Degree at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland

Colonialism · Economic history · Political science · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature

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