Kate Marsh

Gandhi and le gandhisme: Writing Indian Decolonisation and the Appropriation of Gandhi 1919–48

As research by Markovits (2000) has shown, and contemporaries conceded, European writing on Indian moves towards ending the British colonisation of the subcontinent is invariably distilled into one discrete form of representation: le gandhisme and Gandhi. The present article, by examining this colligation of the story of Indian decolonisation to the biography of one man, will reveal a nexus of texts which illuminate a distinctive French-language tradition of writing India. Periodising Indian decolonisation from 1919 (when metropolitan writers first took an interest in Gandhis hartal or general strike) to 1948 (Gandhis assassination), its primary focus is how Gandhis French contemporaries represented and, indeed, appropriated him. By similarly considering texts produced outside this period, the article reveals that certain strategies of representation are pervasive, and that the conflation of the story of Gandhi with the narrative of Indian decolonisation is an important reference point within French cultural production.

Colonial workers, imperial migrants and surveillance: policing in Le Havre, 1914–40

ABSTRACT This article explores how the police and municipal authorities of Le Havre responded to the colonial others who passed through, or resided in, the Seine-Inférieure port between the outbreak of the First World War and the defeat of France in 1940. Interrogating how the police and urban authorities monitored migrants to the port, it reveals how Le Havre’s imperial and transnational space was distinctive in terms of the peoples who established themselves in the port, the ways in which they forged links with other peripheral locations throughout the French empire, and how the local authorities attempted to control migrants and incomers from the French overseas empire. It highlights particularities of Le Havre’s urban space – notably its lack of a university and prestigious lycées, its pre-1914 history of militant strike action, its role as France’s main transatlantic port, and the presence of a small colonial population with a narrow social-economic profile – and shows how these particularities resulted in the enactment and sometimes neglect of national policies and agendas according to specific local priorities.

‘La Nouvelle Activité des Trafiquants de Femmes’: France, Le Havre and the Politics of Trafficking, 1919–1939

This article examines how the ‘moral panic’ about sex trafficking during the interwar years manifested itself in Le Havre, a French port which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, had become synonymous with the illegal trade. Examining hitherto-neglected material in departmental archives, it explores how the problem of la traite des femmes changed after 1919; how the administrative consequences of directives by the League of Nations could influence behaviours in everyday life; and how an episode in female migration from Eastern Europe interacted with French political agendas to magnify and, in some cases, generate a problem.

L’affaire Galmot : Colonialism on trial in 1931

Between 9 March and 21 March 1931 12 men and two women, all French citizens from French Guiana, were put on trial at an extraordinary session of the cour d’assises in Nantes. All were accused of looting and murder during riots which had taken place on 6 and 7 August 1928 in Cayenne; all were acquitted. Despite being one of the biggest trials of the interwar period in France, the event was largely forgotten until a major exhibition staged in Nantes in 2011. Examining the public reaction to the trial in 1931, this article has two key aims. First, it will explore attitudes towards colonialism and republicanism in the provinces and metropolitan France. Second, it will use the exhibition of 2011 as a means of addressing the memorial debate to show how such recoveries of forgotten events, however laudable and necessary, risk perpetuating an image of an idealised republicanism based upon universalism.

A Frenchwoman's Imperial Story: Madame Luce in nineteenth-century AlgeriaREBECCA ROGERS

At the time of writing these words (1923), Holtby’s community was in London, where she shared a flat with Vera Brittain, lecturing for the League of Nations Union, establishing a career in journalism and getting her first novel (Anderby Wold) published. Winifred Holtby’s six novels are examined by Regan in chronological order of publication, allowing the reader to chart the development and varying treatment of the novels’ dominant themes but also to consider the literary progression and Holtby’s changing and expanding vision of the world, from the East Riding of Yorkshire to her travels in Africa. Regan offers a unique assessment of Holtby’s vision of the world and the result is an accessible study, rich in detail, that advances understanding of her life, work and the world that she inhabited. Those familiar with Holtby’s fiction will find their knowledge and critical assessment enriched by this book, whereas those who have not read her novels, yet consult this volume for its accessible examination of interwar feminism and political change will, I feel sure, want to start on these as soon as they can.

‘Rights of the Individual’, Indentured Labour and Indian Workers: The French Antilles and the Rhetoric of Slavery Post 1848

This article interrogates French discussions of indentured Indian labourers, slavery and emancipation in the era following the French abolition of slavery in 1848. Elucidating, for the first time, how indentured Indians were co-opted into French debates on slavery to become a rhetorical weapon with which to contrast a supposedly benevolent French colonialism with the systems employed by the British (debates which largely ignore the looming presence of the slave power in the United States), it demonstrates how discussions on ‘liberty’ and ‘emancipation’ cannot be divorced from European imperial domains. In presenting a French narrative which contrasts with the ‘liberating’ experiences recorded by black abolitionists crossing the Atlantic to Europe, the article situates debates on slavery within a transnational context. As such, it seeks to expand existing frameworks for understanding transatlantic slavery discussions which took place during the second half of the nineteenth century.