April 2005 Newsletter

September 2005 Newsletter

Among the items of special interest in this issue of the newsletter are the call for papers and logistical information on the 2006 annual meeting in Dakar. Please note that the deadline for submitting paper proposals (October 15) is fast approaching. Additional information will be posted on the society’s web page as it becomes available.

This issue also contains the Heggoy and Eccles prize citations. The FCHS is pleased to welcome Owen White to the Heggoy Committee. In addition to news from colleagues and the presidential letter, this issue also contains several other noteworthy items. In particular, please note Sue Peabody’s summary of the new law passed by the French parliament regarding the creation of an official history of French overseas activities.

Finally, please check to see if your dues are up to date; the mailing labels for the newsletter will indicate the years for which dues have been paid.

President’s Message

In early June, the beautiful campus of Acadia University, the fascinating natural setting of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and balmy early summer weather provided a magnificent backdrop for the Society’s 31^st annual meeting. Some one hundred members, together with numerous spouses, partners, and friends, listened to an array of presentations, enjoyed several bounteous receptions, visited Grand Pré National Historical Site, and socialized happily on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. We are deeply grateful to all those who helped make the meeting such a great success. Special thanks are owed to Maurice Basque, Bill Shorrock, and Josette Brun, for organizing the sessions, to Barry Moody and John Johnston for the myriad local arrangements, and to André Richard for his tireless work coordinating just about everything. For hosting superb receptions, I would like to thank Dr. Bruce Matthews, Dean of Arts at Acadia University; Professor Maurice Basque, Directeur du Centre des Etudes acadiennes at the Université de Moncton; and M. Michel Freymuth, Consul Général de France à Moncton et Halifax.

Several items of importance to the Society’s future activities were reported at Wolfville; some have already been reported in previous newsletters but bear repeating here. First of all, the Society is fortunate that Leslie Choquette has become editor of French Colonial History for the next two years. Together with an enlarged editorial board, Leslie is hard at work selecting and editing submissions for volume 7, which will be published next spring. At the meeting a change in submissions policy was announced, to take effect immediately. In the past, articles were only accepted for publication in French Colonial History (as earlier in Proceedings) if they had been presented at one of the Society’s annual meetings. From now on, Society members (only) can submit papers for FCH whether or not they were delivered at an annual meeting. Given the constraints of the FCH editing and publishing schedule, however, submissions will only be read and evaluated once a year, in the summer, for publication in the next year’s volume of the journal. If you have any questions about the new policy, please contact Leslie at LeslieChoquette@msn.com.

This year’s Heggoy Prize winner was also announced at Wolfville, and the announcement is printed elsewhere in this newsletter, together with a call for submissions for the 2006 Prize. After several years of service, most recently as chair, Sue Peabody is stepping down from the Prize Committee. She will be replaced as chair by Eric Jennings (University of Toronto). The other members of the panel are Peter Moogk (University of British Columbia) and Owen White (University of Delaware). The winner of this year’s Eccles Prize was likewise announced at Wolfville; the citation can be found in this newsletter.

Shortly after the conference, H-French-Colonial, a listserv hosted by H-Net, came on line. In just a few months it has proved a valuable source of information, including cross-posts from other listservs of interest, so I encourage you to subscribe if you have not done so already. H-French-Colonial is ably edited by Jeremy Rich, who together with Jyoti Mohan and Ibra Sene was instrumental in getting H-French-Colonial established. On behalf of the Society, and French colonial studies more broadly, I would like to thank them for their hard work and fine achievement.

By this point you should have received your copy of volume 6 of French Colonial History, edited by Pat Galloway. Once again, I’d like to thank Pat for her fine service as editor of volumes 5 and 6. If you have not received volume 6, and you are a paid-up member of the Society, please contact our Secretary-Treasurer Bill Newbigging, who maintains the membership rolls. Contact Bill, too, if you want to pay your dues or have questions about your membership.

This issue of the newsletter also contains an update on next year’s meeting, which will be held in Dakar, Senegal, from Thursday May 18, through Saturday May 20, by co-chair Kwaku Gyasi. As you will see, Kwaku has arranged a most advantageous flight and accommodations package for North American members. If you are interested in taking advantage of this package, you will need to contact Kwaku very soon. Further updates, together with the call for papers, can be found on our website. It is worth noting that the deadline for submitting paper and panel proposals is 15 October 2005.

Future meetings will be held in La Rochelle, France (mid-May 2007) and Quebec City (2008), and we are actively exploring the possibility of gathering in St. Louis in 2009. Suggestions from members about meeting sights are always welcome, particularly if accompanied by ideas about possible contact persons, sponsoring organizations, and possible visits to French colonial sites in the area.

Best wishes for the autumn.

Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, 2006

Each year the French Colonial Historical Society presents a book in honor of one of its founding members, Alf Andrew Heggoy. Book prize recognition includes an award of US $350 for the best book published during the previous year dealing with the French colonial experience from the 16th to the 20th century. Books from any academic discipline will be considered but they must approach the consideration of the French colonial experience from an historical perspective. The deadline for this year is March 1, 2006.

Applicants or their publishers should send three copies of books published in 2004 to the chairperson of the book prize committee: Eric Jennings, Department of History, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada (eric.jennings@utoronto.ca).

The award will be announced at the annual conference of the French Colonial Historical Society in Dakar, Senegal in May 2006. Members of the Book Prize Committee are Owen White (University of Delaware), Peter Moogk (University of British Columbia), Eric Jennings, Chair (University of Toronto).

French Colonial Historical Society

Société d'histoire coloniale française

Wolfville, NS

June 4, 2005

Citation

Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, 2005

Schiebinger, Londa. Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Harvard University Press, 2004.

It is certainly a cliché for a prize committee to comment upon the difficulty of selecting a winner among the many fine nominees in a given year. Yet, I must insist that, in my four years of service on the Heggoy Book Prize committee, this year’s selection has been especially challenging, due to the very high number of truly exceptional submissions. We had fourteen nominees in total (a record during my tenure on the committee), several from some of the most prestigious and specialized presses in Canada, England, France, and the United States. The quantity and quality of the submissions only highlight the degree to which the field of French Colonial History has really come into its own.

Many of this year’s nominees challenge our preconceptions about what, in fact, constitutes French colonial history. Whereas, at one time, the field might be self-evidently taken as the study of Frenchmen (their lives and institutions) in their overseas colonies, this year’s submissions – more than any in the recent past – ask us to reexamine the French imperial experience from the outside in, by privileging the perspectives of the people indigenous – or forcibly transported – to the regions where French colonists settled, conquered and ruled. Perhaps most revealingly, several of this year’s nominated books call into question an earlier commonsense division between the French metropole as Hexagon and its overseas colonies by examining the political and cultural resistence between peripheral regions (the Camargue, the Larzac) and Parisian centrality.

Yet this year’s winner, Londa Schiebinger’s Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Harvard), clearly stands out for its originality and elegance. A groundbreaking work in Atlantic history, environmental history and the history of science, Plants and Empire follows a single plant about which very little was previously known or written, Merian's peacock flower, decoding its many colonial connections. Schiebinger traces knowledge of the plant from its discovery and use by indigenous and enslaved women in the West Indies as an abortifacient, into the written records of French and other European colonists (Poincy, Descourtilz, Merian, Sloane), to Europe, where the exotic plant was happily cultivated but where knowledge of its capacity to end pregnancy disappeared. In this way, Shiebinger asks us to consider the ways that science and empire privilege certain knowledge, while allowing others to become lost in a self-induced “ignorance.”

The selection of this book as winner of the Heggoy Prize for “the best book ... dealing with the French colonial experience from the 16th to the 20th century” will no doubt be controversial, because of its subject matter, argument and scope. By addressing the imperialism of resource identification and extraction (in Schiebinger’s neologism: bioprospecting) and the controversial subject of abortion, Schiebinger’s detailed analysis of the early modern natural sciences implicitly critiques many of presentist positions as universal or eternal. Because her argument traces not only the direct transmission of knowledge but also absences, forgetting, and silences, some will criticize this work as speculative but, as Schiebinger clearly shows, there are limits to positivist history; through diligent research and careful interrogation of sources, we can catch glimpses of the worlds beyond the records produced by colonial participants. Finally, although Plants and Empire goes beyond the French colonial empire to embrace an “extended Caribbean ... from Jamestown, Virginia to Bahia, Brazil,” its findings on Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guiana alone are startling.

In short, Londa Schiebinger’s Plants and Empire is an eminently readable, meticulously argued, extremely original work of history that deserves to be read widely – by scholars of the French colonies, yes, but also by students, historians of science, of gender relations, of slavery, of the environment, of empire, of the Atlantic world. In recognition of the excellence of this book and in the interest of recommending it to members of the French Colonial Historical Society and a much wider audience, the prize committee celebrates Plants and Empire with the 2005 Heggoy Book Prize.

Books Nominated for the Annual

Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, 2005

Dubois, Laurent. A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804. University of North Carolina Press.

This impressive, highly readable account of the revolution in Guadeloupe, brings to light the Hugues and Delgrès sagas, deconstructing their meanings, legacies and memories.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Belknap/Harvard.

This colorful, extremely readable history of the Haitian Revolution will deservedly be used in many classes as “the” text of the revolution.

Evans, Martin. Empire and Culture: the French Experience, 1830-1940. London: Palgrave.

A well integrated and high quality conference volume on the cultural aspects of French empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this work includes thematic sections on film; photography; food, music and dance; and promoting the French empire.

Genova, James Eskridge. Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of Mimicry in French-Ruled West Africa, 1914-1956. New York: Peter Lang.

This interesting study, drawing upon postcolonial and cultural theory, examines the role of the French-educated African elite or évolués, in the period from the First World War to the eve of decolonization.

Kent, Timothy. Rendezvous at the Straits: Fur Trade and Military Activities at Fort De Buiade and Fort Michilimackinac, 1669-1781. 2 vols. Ossineke, MI: Silver Fox Enterprizes

This comprehensive 2-volume study presents more than seventy drawings and images plus more than fifty translations of the original French-language documents to shed light on the early fur traders around the Great Lakes region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Johnston, A.J.B. Storied Shores: St. Peter’s, Isle Madame, Chapel Island in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries. University College of Cape Breton Press.

A lively account of the portage place, replaced in 1869 by a canal, between the Bras d’Or Lake and the Atlantic Ocean and the sustained contact between Europeans and Mi’kmaq in this area of Cape Breton.

Lebovics, Herman. Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age. Duke: Duke University Press.

A lively, well written and probing account of various manifestations of French regionalism and anti-globalization, this innovative study reconfigures the notion of imperial center and periphery by examining the manufacture and assertion of regionalisms against the Parisian center as well as popular New France nationalism, as evidenced in the fans of the French multiracial soccer team’s win over Brazil in 1998.

Lorin, Amaury. Paul Doumer, gouverneur général de l’Indochine (1897-1902), le tremplin colonial. L’Harmattan.

A passionate biography of Paul Doumer, whose governorship left a strong impression on the French colony of Indochine at the turn of the century.

Pritchard, James. In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730. Cambridge.

This wide-ranging account of France’s first empire, 1670-1730, incorporates geographical, demographic, economic, social, and military analysis to the French colonies of North America and the Caribbean. With numerous tables and clear organizational structure, this is a very useful resource for historians of the early Atlantic world.

Frédéric Régent, Esclavage, Métissage, Liberté: La Révolution française à la Guadeloupe (1789-1802). Éditions Bernard Grasset.

Based on meticulous archival work, this detailed study examines the social structure of Guadeloupe in the early stages of the Revolution, focusing on the period prior to and following the general emancipation of 1794. This thoughtful and careful study reveals complex local understandings of race and métissage through the author’s wideranging knowledge of Guadeloupe and the archives.

Reid, John G., Maurice Basque, Elizabeth Mancke, Barry Moody, Geoffrey Plank, and William Wicken. The “Conquest” of Acadia, 1710: Imperial, Colonial and Aboriginal Constructions, University of Toronto.

This very strong collaborative project examines the French surrender of the colony of Acadia to British armed forces in 1710, emphasizing the many perspectives on the event: native inhabitants (Mi’kmaq, Wulstukwiuk, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot), Acadian colonists, British and French officials, and British colonists.

Singer, Barnet and John Langdon, Cultured Force: Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire. University of Wisconsin Press.

A colorful revisionist history of French imperialism, from the conquest of Algeria to the eve of decolonization, this work focuses on the biographies of key military figures: Bugeaud, Faidherbe, Gallieni, Joffre, Lyautey, Bigeard and others.

Zaretsky, Robert. Cock and Bull Stories: Folco de Baroncelli and the Invention of the Camargue. University of Nebraska Press.

A stimulating exploration of the cultural and political tensions between metropolitan republican France and the regionalist counterweight, the Camargue, as emblematic in the symbols of the cock and the bull.

W. J. Eccles Prize, 2005

Michelle Cheyne’s well-written and carefully structured paper tracks a pedestrian opera manuscript as it moves through the censorship mill in Restoration-era France. She explains why this opera was found unacceptable in its original form and was subsequently transformed in such a way that it was drained of ideological and emotional content comprehensible to its intended audience. The opera, "Pyracmond, ou les Créoles," closed after only a few performances.

Cheyne takes the surviving version of the libretto, together with the comments of censors and references in the press, and from these sources teases out an analysis of French unease over questions of empire and colony, monarchy and republic and troubled French assumptions about hierarchy, in particular, racial hierarchy. By replacing a black, colonial protagonist with an Arab one and by shifting the scene of action from the Antilles to Madagascar, the libretto's revision avoided any encouragement for the audience to think about the metropolitan/colonial, white/black dichotomies that existed in Restoration France and instead found a villain for the piece outside the confines of the French cultural/imperial sphere in the person of an Arab, savage but also outlandish, irrelevant, and unchallenging. The documentary materials here analyzed are for Cheyne the pieces of a puzzle, a puzzle with many gaps, which this historian has fitted together with great intellectual dexterity in this tour de force of historical investigation and explanation.

Colleagues at Work

A.J.B. (John) Johnston has published “French Attitudes toward the Acadians, ca. 1680-1756,” a paper that he presented at the FCHS conference in Washington, DC in 2004. The published article appears in Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, ed., Du Grand Dérangement à la Déportation, nouvelles perspectives historiques (Moncton : Chaire d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, 2005).

Bertie Mandelblatt is writing working on a dissertation which examines the naval networks that provisioned the Franco-Caribbean colonies and local sites of dietary creolization. She is particularly interested in the roles played by material culture, in the form of food and cuisine, in the production of the new world.

Ken Orosz is revising his dissertation entitled “Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885-1939" for publication with Peter Lang. He expects to submit the revised manuscript in the spring.

Notices

On February 10, 2005, the French Parlement passed a bill (2005-158) seeking to recognize the contribution of "repatriated French" colonists, including certain former members of the OAS. Article 4 of this law requires that French "university research programs grant to the history of the French presence overseas, in particular in North Africa, the place which it deserves ... [S]chool curriculi [must] recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, in particular in North Africa, and acknowledge the history and the sacrifices made by combatants in the French Army within these territories the eminent place to which they have right.... [t]he co-operation allowing the comparison of both written and oral sources, in France and abroad is encouraged." On March 25, 2005, an organized group of French academics -- many of whom are historians with specializations in the history of colonization -- mounted a petition drive in Le Monde, registering protest against this law. Many state that they refuse to apply Article 4 in their instruction of history and urge the minister of education to take a public position against the law. Within three weeks, the petition received more than 1000 signatures. The text of the petition and more information surrounding the law and resistance to it can be found at the website: http://www.ldh-toulon.net/

Grinnell College is seeking to fill a tenure-track position in Modern European history (excluding Britain and Russia) with a preference for candidates with demonstrated expertise in transnational history. PhD preferred, ABD considered. Teaching load is 5 courses over 2 semesters and will include introductory courses (“Cultural Encounters in History” and/or Basic Issues in European History 1650-present), intermediate level courses with a national, comparative, or international focus, and an advanced seminar on a topic of the instructor’s choice. Please send a cover letter, CV, transcripts and at least 3 letters of recommendation to Prof. Daniel Kaiser, Chair, Modern European Seach Committee, Department of History, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 50112-1690 (e-mail: historysearch@grinnell.edu). In their application letter candidates should discuss their interest in developing as a scholar in an undergraduatte libeal arts environment and must demonstrate an interest in participating in the College’s general education offerings. For more information about Grinnell College go to www.grinnell.edu.