Incident at Sousse: West African Soldiers, Legionnaires, and the Racial Politics of Colonial Policing in 1930s French Tunisia.
This article explores the incident at Sousse, a conflict in mid-1930s French Tunisia in which a security force of West African troops launched an unauthorized attack against the city's residents. Developing a microhistorical approach to the conflict, the study analyzes how a range of colonial as wel...
| Publicado en: | French Historical Studies Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 485 - 516 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Duke University Press
Aug2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=188313396&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 188313396 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00161071 FHS jtl: French Historical Studies issn: 00161071 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2025 vid: 48 iid: 3 pid: 154 pub: Duke University Press artinfo: ui: 188313396 10.1215/00161071-11781709 ppf: 485 ppct: 31 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 490KB tig: atl: Incident at Sousse: West African Soldiers, Legionnaires, and the Racial Politics of Colonial Policing in 1930s French Tunisia. aug: au: Kaufman, Suzanne K. su: Military personnel Police Nationalists Violence Social problems sug: subj: Military personnel Police Nationalists Violence Social problems keyword: colonialisme empire entre-deux-guerres interwar micro-histoire microhistory race soldats soldiers ab: This article explores the incident at Sousse, a conflict in mid-1930s French Tunisia in which a security force of West African troops launched an unauthorized attack against the city's residents. Developing a microhistorical approach to the conflict, the study analyzes how a range of colonial as well as anticolonial actors exploited the complex racial animosities that emerged from using "foreign" auxiliary troops—West African soldiers as well as legionnaires—to police the Tunisian protectorate. In various ways Muslim residents, European settlers, Tunisian nationalists, and colonial authorities all drew from racialized discourses of Blackness, Frenchness, and foreignness to denigrate West African troops, spurring those soldiers to enact colonial violence to reclaim their military honor. By deconstructing the incident at Sousse, the article argues that the very racial categories and animosities so deeply embedded in structures of colonial policing could prove highly disruptive in the context of everyday governance. At one level a local study focused on the collision of racialized discourses, this research also sheds light on the contradictory articulation of racial hierarchy and imperial power, as well as how colonized peoples—Tunisian Muslims and West African soldiers—undermined and challenged that power. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of French Historical Studies is the property of Duke University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: French Historical Studies holder: Duke University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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