The Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, 2009 - 2010

2009 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize (for books published in 2008)

French Colonial Historical Society
Société d'histoire coloniale française
San Francisco, CA
May 2009

Citation

Kenneth Orosz, Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885-1939 (New York: Peter Lang/American University Studies, 2008)

Forensic in its use of evidence and genuinely comparative in approach, this is a ground-breaking work whose originality and clarity impressed all three Heggoy Prize judges. The book compels us to think differently about the dynamics of missionary-state relations, inter-confessional rivalries, and the ethno-centric ‘nationalism’ of certain missionary organizations. The sum is a path-breaking reassessment of the cultural impact of language policy on colonial society. A worthy winner of the Alfred Heggoy prize, 2009.

Books Nominated for the Annual Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, 2009

Jean-Luc Andrian, Les Généraux Andafiavaratra et la France au XIXe siècle à Madagascar (Selah Publishing)
A highly original and richly illustrated study that reassesses the colonial - pre-colonial divide in Madagascar through the prism of the leading military actors who helped entrench Hova dominance and monarchical rule in Madagascar’s central highlands and beyond over the course of the nineteenth century before coordinating the resistance to French incursions from the 1880s onward.

Peter J. Bloom, French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism (University of Minnesota Press)
With beautiful illustrations, this book offers insightful readings of colonial iconography, from beverage advertisements to films about trans-Saharan crossings. Bloom shows the importance of colonial documentary both to the formation of claims of colonial humanitarianism and to debates over French identity and multiculturalism.

Philip P. Boucher, France and the American Tropics to 1700: Tropics of Discontent? (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
This magisterial survey of the French tropics in the seventeenth century is the first of its kind; its multiple narratives encompass military, political, social, and economic history as well as the trajectories of individual colonies.

Jean-François Brière, Haïti et la France 1804-1848 (Karthala)
A very welcome addition to the literature on Haiti that takes as its starting point the transition to independence in January 1804 after the social upheavals of the preceding fifteen years. Elegantly written and convincingly argued, the author illustrates the methods – diplomatic, economic, and coercive - and the frustrations inherent in French efforts to re-build imperial influence over Haiti during the course of the early nineteenth century.

H. Sophie Burton & F. Todd Smith, Colonial Natchitoches: A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2008)
Colonial Natchitoches is the first comprehensive study of this small but strategically located multi-ethnic community on the margins of two empires.

Kevin Callahan and Sarah Curtis (eds.), Views from the Margins: Creating Identities in Modern France (University of Nebraska Press)
A fine collection of thought-provoking essays, many of which deal directly with colonialism, Views from the Margins explores how race, language, gender, and religion have helped shape what has constituted “Frenchness” in the modern period.

Shannon Lee Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008)
This bold and ambitious study of French colonial New Orleans not only captures the flavor of everyday life by marrying history to archaeology; it also considers the colony’s global significance as an exemplar of rogue colonialism, a form of collaboration between rogue entrepreneurs and the colonial state.

Richard Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918 (The John Hopkins University Press)
An outstanding and well-researched history of the roles played by colonial soldiers in the First World War, this study explores how the experiences of non-European troops exposed deep paradoxes at the heart of republican ideologies of universalism.

William Gallois, The Administration of Sickness: Medicine and Ethics in Nineteenth-Century Algeria (Palgrave Macmillan)
This exhaustive analysis documents the obstacles, rivalries, and anti-colonial politics that challenged and even derailed local administrative goals of using medicine in the settling of Algeria.

Rafaël Herzstein, Université Saint-Joseph de beyrouth. Fondation et fonctionnement de 1871 à 1914 (Le Cri Jesuitica)
More than an institutional study, this well researched book analyzes the early history of Beirut’s Université Saint-Joseph to illustrate the communal and religious divides that shaped the cultural politics of education on the eve of the consolidation of a Lebanese state under French mandatory rule.

Nicolas Landry, Plaisance, Terre-Neuve, 1650-1713, Une colonie française en Amérique (Sillery, Qué.: Septentrion, 2008)
This meticulously researched study is also the first general history of the colony of Plaisance, the center of France’s important codfish trade in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Marnia Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire (Princeton)
A path-breaking, inter-disciplinary study that confronts the systematization of state torture in late colonial Algeria. Harrowing and revealing, the book reconsiders the processes and practices that contributed to the normalization, even banalization, of French acts of physical, sexual, and psychological violence against Algerians in the violent descent to decolonization.

Van Nguyen-Marshall, In Search of Moral Authority: The Discourse on Poverty, Poor Relief, and Charity in French Colonial Vietnam (Peter Lang Press)
This original and deeply researched study shines new light on the politics behind both indigenous and French constructions of the ideas of poverty and charity in colonial Vietnam.