Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T09:28:58.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

NURSING TRANSGRESSIONS, EXPLORING DIFFERENCE: NORTH AFRICANS IN FRENCH MEDICAL SPACES DURING WORLD WAR I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2018

Chris Rominger
Chris Rominger*
Affiliation:
Chris Rominger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Fl.; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the social impact of North African soldiers’ experiences in French military hospitals during World War I. In particular, it examines improvised “Muslim hospitals” that were opened in order to isolate North Africans from French civilian society. Colonial and military officials believed that North Africans, presumed to be warlike, pathogenic, and promiscuous, could corrupt and be corrupted by the French public. Yet while existing literature tends to highlight the dehumanization of North Africans at the hands of military and medical authorities, this article, drawing from personal correspondence, photographs, and military and medical records, reveals a more ambiguous daily reality. I argue that the individual needs and desires of wounded North Africans and of French nurses, as well as material limitations and contingencies, created spaces for an unprecedented series of humanizing personal encounters. In military-medical “colonies within the metropole,” these soldiers found themselves caught between a newfound sense of affinity with the French public and a starker sense of the boundaries of colonial practice.

Keywords

colonialismFrench EmpireNorth AfricamedicineWorld War I
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 691 - 713
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Author's note: I thank Beth Baron, Samira Haj, Clifford Rosenberg, and Febe Armanios for their constant encouragement and for their invaluable feedback on this project. I am grateful for grants from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies and the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d'Amérique that made this research possible. I am thankful to Elizabeth Thompson and my colleagues in the 2014 National Endowment for the Humanities seminar “World War I in the Middle East and North Africa” for their continued support and camaraderie. Special thanks are due to Julia Clancy-Smith, Amy Kallander, M'hamed Oualdi, Megan Brown, and Katrina Wheeler for their helpful suggestions for this article. I thank this journal's editors and anonymous reviewers for their extensive and constructive feedback.

References

NOTES

1 Fogarty, Richard, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 81Google Scholar. See also Thomas DeGeorges, “A Bitter Homecoming: Tunisian Veterans of the First and Second World Wars” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006), 26; and Meynier, Gilbert, L'Algérie Revelée: La guerre de 1914–1918 et le premier quart du XXe siècle (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1981), 417–19Google Scholar.

2 Koller, Christian, “The Recruitment of Colonial Troops in Africa and Asia and Their Deployment in Europe during the First World War,” Immigrants & Minorities 26 (2008): 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 No last name is given for ʿAmr; also unspecified is the full extent of his injuries.

4 Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes (hereafter CADN): 1TU/125/23 – Lettre de Cantinelli, 29 May 1917. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

5 CADN: 1TU/125/23 – Le Contrôleur Civil de Kairouan, “Au sujet d'une infermière,” 20 August 1917.

6 French documents interchangeably used the terms “Muslim hospital,” “African hospital,” and “colonial hospital” to refer to Carrières-sous-Bois and Moisselles. The vast majority of patients were Muslim North Africans, though patients from other colonies are occasionally mentioned.

7 For example, see Mahjoubi, Ali, Les Origines du mouvement national en Tunisie, 1904–1934 (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1982), 147Google Scholar.

8 For example, see Vaughan, Megan, introduction to Psychiatry and Empire, ed. Mahone, Sloan and Vaughan, Megan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 1–4Google Scholar; and Clark, Hannah-Louise, “Expressing Entitlement in Colonial Algeria: Villagers, Medical Doctors, and the State in the Early 20th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 48 (2016): 445–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Conklin, Alice, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 68–70Google Scholar. See also Echenberg, Myron, Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–1945 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2002), 123–32Google Scholar.

10 Mills, James H. and Jain, Sanjeev, “Mapother of the Maudsley and Psychiatry at the End of the Raj,” in Psychiatry and Empire, ed. Mahone, Sloan and Vaughan, Megan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Google Scholar, 164–65.

11 Boittin, Jennifer Anne, Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 77–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Andrew, C. M. and Kanya-Forster, A. S., “France, Africa and the First World War,” Journal of African History 19 (1978): 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Conscription provoked several revolts in the French Empire, including a major one in south Constantine in 1916 and 1917. Meynier, L'Algérie Revelée, 591–98.

14 Fogarty, Race and War in France, 230–69.

15 Archives Nationales de Tunisie (hereafter ANT): Série E, 440/18A: 129, G. Louchet, Pharmacien – auxiliaire V.37, Moisselles.

16 Meynier, L'Algérie Revelée, 743–45.

17 Rogan, Eugene, “No Stake in Victory: North African Soldiers of the Great War,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 14 (2014): 327–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Muhammad al-ʿAdil Dabub, “al-Raʾi al-ʿAm al-Tunisi wa-l-Harb al-ʿAlamiyya al-Ula: Namadhij min khilal al-Silsila al-Farʿiya ‘al-Shuʾun al-ʿAskariyya,’” (Tunis: Université de Tunis I, 1992–93), 170–71.

19 Ibid., 208–12.

20 Mann, Gregory, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Fogarty, , “Race and Sex, Fear and Loathing in France during the Great War,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century, ed. Herzog, Dagmar (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 67Google Scholar.

22 Keller, Richard C., Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Clark, Hannah-Louise, “Civilization and Syphilization: A Doctor and His Disease in Colonial Morocco,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 87 (2013), 104–6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

24 Surkis, Judith, Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in 1870–1920 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), 223–30Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., 83.

26 Stoler, Ann Laura, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2002), 57Google Scholar.

27 Fogarty, “Race and Sex, Fear and Loathing,” 75–77.

28 MacMaster, Neil, “The Role of European Women and the Question of Mixed Couples in the Algerian Nationalist Movement in France, circa 1918–1962,” French Historical Studies 34 (2011): 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Ibid., 69, 83.

30 Stovall, Tyler, “Love, Labor, and Race: Colonial Men and White Women in France during the Great War,” in French Civilization and Its Discontents: Nationalism, Colonialism, Race, ed. Stovall, Tyler (New York: Lexington Books, 2003), 307Google Scholar.

31 Lunn, Joe, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1993), 172–78Google Scholar.

32 Stovall, “Love, Labor, and Race,” 304–5.

33 Fogarty, “Race and Sex, Fear and Loathing,” 68–69.

34 Ibid., 69–70.

35 CADN: 1TU/125/14 – Le Contrôleur Civil du Kef à Flandin, 15 January 1919.

36 CADN: 1TU/125/14 – Au sujet d'un marriage entre Française et indigène, 25 October 1915.

37 Le Naour, “La question de la violation de l'interdit racial,” 173–74.

38 Stovall, “Love, Labor, and Race,” 312–13.

39 Meynier, L'Algérie révélée, 416; Jean-Yves Le Naour, “La question de la violation de l'interdit racial en 1914–1918. La rencontre des coloniaux et des femmes françaises,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 61 (2000): 180–81.

40 Meynier, L'Algérie révélée, 416.

41 Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race, 116–18.

42 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 310, “Hospitalisation des blesses Musulmans, 1916–1918.”

43 Meynier, L'Algérie révélée, 415.

44 Clark, “Expressing Entitlement in Colonial Algeria,” 456–57.

45 Schulthiess, Katrin, Bodies and Souls: Politics and the Professionalization of Nursing in France, 1880–1922 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 159–61Google Scholar. See also Hallett, Christine E. and Fell, Alison S., introduction to First World War Nursing: New Perspectives, ed. Hallett, Christine E. and Fell, Alison S. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 2–5Google Scholar.

46 Darrow, Margaret H., “French Volunteer Nursing and the Myth of War Experience in World War I,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 82–84CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

47 Schulthiess, Bodies and Souls, 151–53, 174–75.

48 Ibid., 160–62.

49 Le Naour, “La question de la violation de l'interdit racial,” 182–84.

50 CADN: 1TU/125/23 – Lettre de Cantinelli, 29 May 1917.

51 A contrôleur civil was appointed by the resident general to oversee affairs in each of Tunisia's thirteen nonmilitary districts.

52 CADN: 1TU/125/23 – Lettre de Cantinelli, 29 May 1917.

53 Ibid.

54 Michel, Marc, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre : l'appel à l'Afrique (1914–1918) (Paris: Karthala Editions, 2014), 117Google Scholar.

55 Conklin, Alice, In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013), 72–77Google Scholar.

56 For example, see Keller, Colonial Madness, 130–50.

57 Fogarty, Race and War in France, 214–15.

58 Ibid., 239–41.

59 Hassett, Dónal, “Pupilles de l'Empire: Debating the Provision for Child Victims of the Great War in the French Empire,” French Historical Studies 39 (2016): 321, 342CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Carol Acton, “Negotiating Injury and Masculinity in First World War Nurses’ Writing,” in First World War Nursing, 123–24.

61 Kirsty Harris, “All for the Boys: The Nurse–Patient Relationship of Australian Army Nurses in the First World War,” in First World War Nursing, 74–75.

62 Carden-Coyne, Ana, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 174–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 270–309Google Scholar.

63 Acton, “Negotiating Injury and Masculinity,” 125.

64 Mann, Native Sons, 166.

65 Fogarty, “Race and Sex, Fear and Loathing,” 69–70.

66 Schulthiess, Bodies and Souls, 82–84.

67 Acton, “Negotiating Injury and Masculinity,” 128.

68 Fogarty, Race and War in France, 157–59.

69 Eustace, Nicole, Lean, Eugenia, Livingston, Julie, Plamper, Jan, Reddy, William M., and Rosenwein, Barbara H., “AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions,” American Historical Review 117 (2012): 1505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Keller, Colonial Madness, 54–56.

71 Mann, Gregory, “Locating Colonial Histories: Between France and West Africa,” American Historical Review 110 (2005): 414–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mann, Native Sons, 166–68.

72 Hyson, Samuel and Lester, Alan, “‘British India on Trial’: Brighton Military Hospitals and the Politics of Empire in World War I,” Journal of Historical Geography 38 (2012): 18–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Rosenberg, Policing Paris, 172–76.

74 J. Quantin, “Dans les hôpitaux musulmans,” France Maroc: Revue mensuelle, organe du Comité des Foires du Maroc, 15 July 1918, 209–10.

75 Ibid., 210–11.

76 “Nos troupes de l'Afrique du Nord: le Service de Santé s'occupe de nos soldats musulmans,” Le Monde Illustré, 1 June 1918.

77 “Le religieux musulman et l'armée française (1914–1920),” Michel Renard, accessed 1 September 2016, http://etudescoloniales.canalblog.com/archives/2014/08/23/30279901.html.

78 Mann, Native Sons, 166.

79 For example, see the following photographs in the series: ECPAD SPA 32 L 1709-1710, 1714, 1731D.

80 Das, Santanu, Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6Google Scholar.

81 Das, Touch and Intimacy, 178, citing Katherine Hodges North, “Diary: A Driver at the Front,” Imperial War Museum, 92/22/I, 86.

82 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Cours élémentaire de Français et de leçons de Choses aux Blessés arabes de l'Hôpital VL 37 de Moisselles.” 5 June 1918.

83 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Cours d'Adultes.” 5 June 1918.

84 For example, see Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, 48–54; and Keller, Colonial Madness, 22–30.

85 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Influence de cinématographie sur le moral et la discipline des blessés musulmans en traitement.”

86 Ibid.

87 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, Dr. Gendron, Médecin-Auxiliaire à Moisselles. “Utilisation du cinématographie pour la rééducation des blessés”; “Influence de cinématographie…”

88 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Influence de cinématographie…”

89 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, G. Louchet, Pharmacien – auxiliaire V.37, Moisselles.

90 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Influence de cinématographie…”

91 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, G. Louchet, Pharmacien – auxiliaire V.37, Moisselles.

92 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Influence de cinématographie…”

93 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, G. Louchet, Pharmacien – auxiliaire V.37, Moisselles.

94 ANT: Série E, 44/18A, 130, Report, 5 January 1919. “Au sujet du service d'assistance aux blesses musulmans, 1918–1919.”

95 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, Dr. Gendron, “Utilisation du cinématographie…”

96 DeGeorges, “A Bitter Homecoming,” 59–61.

97 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, G. Louchet, Pharmacien – auxiliaire V.37, Moisselles.

98 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 310, “Hospitalisation des blesses Musulmans, 1916-1918.” MFA to RG, 11 August 1917 #915.

99 ANT: Série E, 440/18A: 129, “Influence de cinématographie…”

100 ANT: Série E, 440/18A, 130, “Au sujet du service d'assistance aux blesses musulmans, 1918-1919.” 5 January 1919.

101 Keller, Colonial Madness, 131–32.

102 Comaroff, John L., “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Cooper, Frederick and Stoler, Ann (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997), 172–74Google Scholar.

103 On Jewish–Muslim relations in France during World War I, for example, see Katz, Ethan, The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), 22–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 For example, see Keller, Colonial Madness, 83–120.

105 MacMaster, “Mixed Couples in the Algerian National Movement,” 359–62.

106 Boittin, Colonial Metropolis, 41, 77–110.