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.
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.
By prioritizing women and conjugality in the historiography of African colonial soldiers, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how the subjugation of women was indispensable to military conquest and colonial rule across French Empire.
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.
“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 sénégalais 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:
Un-National Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa*
“This book’s invaluable contribution is the demonstration that the
sexuality and conjugality of women, particularly African women,
were instrumental to global French imperial conquest.”
*Journal of African History*
“Erudite and compelling…. positively sparkles with historical
insight … Militarizing Marriage is an essential read.”
*H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews*
“A massive contribution to scholarship…. I recommend anyone
interested in African history, colonial history, military history,
or gender studies to read this book and assign it to students. It
will contribute a great deal to understanding how we write history
and its complex relations with current politics.”
*H-France*
“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*
“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 sénégalais 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*
[A] timely and perspicacious book. . . . a powerful contribution in
the field. Undergraduate and graduate students of history, as well
as researchers, will find the book most useful. Historians of
empire focusing on almost any aspect—gender, violence, war, race,
sexuality, empire making, household making, marital traditions,
postcolonial discourse—will find this book useful to engage with.
Alongside related work produced by historians such as Rachel
Jean-Baptiste, Ann Stoler, and Carina Ray, Zimmerman’s book
contributes to how we reconceptualize the centrality of women,
marriage, militarism, race, and sexuality in the business of empire
making, and how we connect the imperial past with the present.
*American Historical Review*
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