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Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
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- [00:00]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Hello, everybody.
- [00:01]
Marshall Po
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- [01:07]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste about her book titled Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Race, Childhood, and Citizenship, published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. Taking us back in time to the number of different. Well, today, now they're different countries, but they used to all be part of colonial French Africa. To help us understand how the colonial state, how normal everyday people in the colonial state dealt with the fact that the law often said one thing about race and who was allowed to have what kinds of relationships, both in terms of sexual partnerships as well as sort of familial intergenerational relationships. What the law said, what colonial policy said and what actual people were doing, and how those things didn't always necessarily line up. And that caused the colonial policy and law, for instance, to have to make some adjustments in some cases. So we're very much going to be talking about people that are saying, hang on a second. What box are you putting me in? Why is that box there? What is going on with this? To understand all sorts of questions around identity and sovereignty and really a lot more, too. So we clearly have a lot to discuss. Richelle, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Thank you. Hello, Miranda. Thank you for having me. And I'm looking forward to this conversation.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
I am definitely looking forward to this too. But before we get into the weeds, can you please introduce yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
- [02:41]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Yes. So I should just say that I consider myself a historian of intimacy. And I define intimacy as matters of emotional, bodily, familial and sexual engagement. The things that really matter to people, but that sometimes historians don't really talk about because they're supposed to be inconsequential, but in fact they are consequential. So I'm interested in how these factors shape the creation of selfhood and peoplehood in Africa. And one of the things that you said in your intro is that this book is about how the colonial state views policies. But really what's at the center of my, my work is how colonialism is an interactive process. It's not just top, top down. So I'm interested in how Africans also conceived of intimacy, the divide between the law and practice, and how Africans shaped ideas about race, identity and family. And I should also just say that I am a historian, but I'm also a scholar of the French speaking Atlantic world, as well as issues around gender and sexuality.
- [03:52]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah. And all of those aspects, I think definitely come up in various degrees in this particular book. And so in fact, I want to make sure we're clear on kind of and when we're talking here. So can you tell us a bit about kind of the scope of the book and how you decided on this?
- [04:06]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Yes. So I should just say that this book project actually came out of my very first book, which was on changes in marriage and sexuality in Libreville, Gabon. And I was interested in how men, African men and women who migrated to Libreville during the French colonial period really wanted to carve out a space for themselves in the city and how they viewed their lives in the city through how they engage each other through marriage and sex. And one of the things that I noticed in the historical record is that Libreville had a number of interracial, sexual and conjugal like relationships that occurred to the point where there was a lot of talk about it in colonial documents and also amongst Gabonese populations themselves. So there was one chapter in that book that dealt with interracial sexuality in Gabon. And one of the things that was held off for me is what happened to the children who were born of such relationships. So I'll give you one anecdote. I was Walking around through Libreville looking for a particular person with whom I was trying to do an oral interview. And Libreville is a city that is can be very confusing because there are no street names, numbers on homes, and so on. And I started asking the people around me to try and find this person. And I gave them identifying information, such as a name, a profession, and no one knew. And at some point I said, she's Metis. And people around me said, oh, you mean La Blanche, meaning the white woman. If you had told us that, we would have told you right away where to find her. And that was something that opened up. So that is what got me to thinking to the ways in which the children born of such relationships had very particular markers in terms of how local populations thought of them, how they thought of their identities. And so what this book covers is the approximately between 3,500 to 4,000 people across what was known as French Equatorial Africa and also French West Africa during the period of French colonial rule, which lasted, broadly speaking, from the late 19th century to about 1960, and how they thought of their identities, how French colonial officials, missionaries, what I would call colonial society, and also how their local communities talked about them and how the worries about their existence, the anxieties about their existence, and the ways in which they articulated their own identities caused to have a lot of fissures and debate about what constituted racial identity, citizenship, and also meanings of what I'm calling personhood and colonial rule in the period from about 1900 to 1960. And at first I didn't think this would be such a large scope. I thought this would just be confined to Gabon. And what I found out and what I called and following the roots and the routes or what maybe called the roots, and the roots are o o t s and R u o u.
- [07:15]
R O u T E s of the of Metis themselves. I found that ideas about Metis went beyond individual colonial boundaries and also their physical displacements. They traveled also from colony to colony. And what I discovered was a kind of Pan African sense of Metis identity and debates about them.
- [07:40]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That is a very helpful foundation of a whole bunch of key ideas for the book. So thank you for that. When we're talking about these identities or these ideas of kind of Metis children or people, how did different groups think about them in the sort of beginning of your period? Right. Because as you mentioned earlier, like, there's not just one definition that's top down going around. There's lots of different ideas about what this means. So if we're looking at kind of The French colonial state or non state actors, like missionary groups, what were the different ideas floating around at the beginning of the period you look at?
- [08:16]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Right? And there are definitely different ideas. And I would say that this is an. It's complicated state which reveals that we often talk about this entity called the colonial state or colonialism. But what my book shows is that it's not just one entity and there's not just one thought. In fact, there are competing ideas that would constitute what we call colonial society. So that it's more accurate to talk about colonial societies. And there are also differences, not only debates amongst colonial officials themselves, but also differing debates amongst missionaries, private entities. So to give you some sense of this, the ideas of the colonial state also changed over time. So one of the things that I chart, and it's not just me, other scholars have also talked about this, is that before you get to formal colonialism, let's say in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, interracial sexuality is actually, if not encouraged, but at least tolerated by colonial officials. Because what African women who are engaging in these relationships are doing is that they are actually acting as cultural, economic and social brokers. It's because of what became known in the French as mariage la mode du pays, which means marriage according to local customs. So when French or European men of varied nationalities would, quote, marry a local woman. And by marriage, this would mean actually paying bride wealth, which was the kind of legal and social marker across west and West Equatorial Africa relationship as being a legal marriage. That what European then would gain is entree into particular social, economic and political networks that would therefore allow and facilitate trade. But one of the things that occurred, I would say, at the turn of the century, the early 20th century, and other scholars like Ann Stoller have argued this is that because colonialism is about a kind of hardening of racial lines, Colonialism posits at its core this idea of difference, racial difference, ethnic difference, political, religious difference between a colonial power and a local population, that there was a kind of hardening of racial lines. And so interracial sexuality began to be frowned upon by the French colonial state. Because there was this idea that again, that there's a racial difference. And even as you look at colonial capital cities, there are boundaries where there is the, quote, white or European city and the black or African city. And so as interracial relationships continue, in spite of these prescriptions against this, whether it's a colonial official, an individual European trader, people that scholars refer to as men on the spot, just individual European people who come for adventure or for economic mobility, interracial relationships continue. And so the colonial state begins to be very worried about Metis individuals, multiracial individuals, because it calls into question this racial difference. Another worry that colonial officials had is that because Metis were not formally recognized as French citizens, that Matisse would become what people often referred to as in colonial discourse as.
- [11:47]
People who had French blood. And yet, because they were not recognized, would become resentful of this. And the worry about this really harkened back to the French Revolution. And one of the reasons that scholars argue the French Revolution was successful is precisely because multiracial people who were descendants of French colonial officials and black women connected with black slaves. And this was one of the ways that the revolution were successful. So the French people were always worried about this happening. And the other worry that, though that that took place is that there was a fissure between what the colonial state wanted and also what private individuals were arguing. And one of those groups of private individuals were missionaries who were saying that there was a moral stain upon the French state, upon French solidarity, for fathers to not recognize their children. So missionaries opened up orphanages, so called orphanages, and I say so called, because these children were not orphans. They had mothers, they had fathers who were living, and if anything, it was fathers who refused to recognize them. So you had this thing where in many French colonial. Many French colonies were missionaries were again trying to shame the colonial state and not providing for French children and filling in. So you had, if anything, a lot of debates and differing ideas. The other thing that's also important to note is that Metis themselves use this term, Metis, which was not a term that was in any local African languages, whether it was Wolof in Senegal or in Pungwe in Gabon, and used this term to call themselves, to refer to themselves. And so because of this, this term continued to circulate and continued to be used to codify, if you will, a group of people who were not supposed to exist. And this is the conundrum that legally the French kept denying that there was any category of people called Metis. You're either a French citoyen citizen or you were an African, quote, native or indigen, which was the French term. And so they have this middle category called Metis, would call into question all of this kind of hierarchy within colonialism and the very colonial mission in and of itself.
- [14:12]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's a really fascinating landscape you're helping us understand there. As you said, not just one idea, but many competing contesting ideas. The thread I think I most want to pick up, though, from that is, you mentioned these children in these so called orphanages had mothers. They obviously also had fathers, but you talked about the fathers were often kind of trying not to be connected. That's not the case though, with the mothers. You have loads of examples in the book of African mothers really advocating for their mateis children. So can you tell us more about some of those instances and the kinds of impacts and outcomes that this work had?
- [14:48]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Yes. So one of the things that I think is a through line throughout my work is talking about the resiliency, the advocacy with which African women.
- [15:01]
Sought to navigate lives with meaning during colonialism. Because there is this kind of, I think, through line in much of the history of colonialism in Africa where it is thought that it was African men and European men who were negotiating power politics. And there's often, if you will, this erasure or just this invisibility of African women and the ways that they are acting, actively negotiating colonial forms. And so one of the things that my book unearthed is in spite of the ways again in which a colonial state would, and also missionaries would refer to children as orphanages, African women were at the forefront of advocating for their children. So I'll give you a few examples and I'll talk about individual women because I think it's important to talk about women as individuals and stories because you often get these kind of snippets of African women in colonial documents as opposed to full fledged lives. So one of the things that occurs differently in West Africa and Equatorial Africa around Metis children, that is in contrast to elsewhere in the French empire. So for example, in a place like in Andosin or Indochina or Vietnam as it's known today, is that the French colonial state actually plucks some of these children away from mothers and put them either in French homes or in orphanages. But there are actually very few African children that go into these orphanages. And it's not because of decisions by the French colonial state that I show, but it's because African mothers refuse to relinquish custody over their children. So for example, there's one case in a court record that I found where there was a French couple that were trying to gain custody of a Matisse child. And this woman is by the first name is Adama, and she's in the Ivory coast and she actually, she's illiterate, I think. And yet she gets an African writer, someone who's a professional writer, to write a dozen letters to colonial officials in the Ivory coast in the Congo, saying that she wants custody of her child. She never relinquished custody of her child, and she fights for years and years in the 1930s to gain that custody. Another thing that occurs, I think, is that sons are also advocating for their mothers and their mother's respectability. So one of the people that I talk quite a bit about in the book is a man by the name of Nicolas Rigono, who himself was Matisse, who was born in Benin or Benin in the 1930s, and then moved eventually to Dakar, Senegal, I think, in the 1940s, and opens up his own orphanage, along with his wife, to care for Metis children. But the bigger story of this is how he advocates to the French colonial state in Dakar, for the French colonial state to give money and resources for African mothers to raise their children. So he finds individual women who are suffering, who don't have enough money to raise their children, and advocates again for them to get social welfare payments, be able to send their children to school, and to feed them properly. So I do find some instances of African women who are directly writing and navigating and claiming advocacy for the colonial state for resources. But more often it is their sons who are doing so who are trying to write histories of their mothers as respectable against this colonial discourse of such women as sex workers, women of ill repute. But instead, their sons are writing that they are respectable people. They are mothers who deserve the assistance from the colonial state to raise their children with dignity.
- [19:11]
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- [19:40]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And these messages obviously have an impact, right? They go somewhere. They don't just kind of stay in the archive. And then you're you. You're the first person who's ever seen them. Like, they get read by at least some of these colonial officials with some sort of impact on colonial policy. And that wouldn't happen if these questions around what to do with Metis children, how the state should provide for them, weren't seen as important. So why were these seen as important? You mentioned earlier some of the kind of political implications of it in terms of French identity more broadly. Is there anything further we need to understand to make sense of the way in which colonial officials responded to some of these requests, or at least took them seriously enough to consider?
- [20:22]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Yes. So, as I mentioned at the opening, my book focuses on a relatively small group of people, so they numbered anywhere from 3,500 to 4,000 people across French Equatorial Africa and French West Africa. And yet this relatively small group of people appear with great abundance in the colonial archives. And the thing that is key, it is not only because colonial officials are writing about them, but it is because Metis people themselves are writing to the colonial archives. So beyond the question of identity, the reason why this matters is it gets to the heart of several questions. So not only the very contour of colonial rule and the idea of colonial rule as this kind of asymmetrical political system that talks about difference and the ways in which, again, the existence of these people who are in a liminal space, or not even liminal, they are, in fact, invoking that they have multiple identities, that they are both French and African, black and white, Senegalese and French, Gavonese and French. This idea that there aren't these hierarchies, but there are these multiple identities. Identities. The second thing is it also gets to the heart of who is French or what is French citizenship, which, again, is one of these boundaries that colonialism is trying to set. And this idea that you can be a citizen on the African continent, and also that citizenship can also depend on blood. So the other thing that's at stake is also this idea of what is family, what is paternity, what is maternity, what are the legal boundaries that establish paternity? And therefore, what does paternity, when it's unrecognized, have to do with citizenship? And then the other thing, it's about racial thought. So there's this idea that these ideas about race, racial identity, racial thought, really are these things that come top down from colonial states or from those who are in power, who. But I'm also arguing that Africans themselves are debating what is the meaning of race in this moment, and that these debates and these claims and these invocations from Metis people that are coming from the African continent actually change French law, actually change conceptions about what it means to be French, and actually change the very contours of not just family, but also colonialism itself. So these are not inconsequential questions?
- [22:58]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, not at all. In fact, I'd love to talk more, please, about the ways in which colonial law and policy is sort of forced to change.
- [23:07]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
So one of the things that occurs is, and I argue that it's not just because of kind of French goodwill, but it's precisely because of the ways in which Metis people over the course of the 20th century, refused to disappear in these categories of citizen or native, that the colonial state views African, but they continue to arguing for Matisse as a separate identity, that French citizenship law actually changes. So one of the things that occurs, and it begins in Indochina in the 1930s, and there's a scholar by the name of Emmanuel Sada who wrote about the change in laws in the 1930s for Indochina, and I picked this up for French West Equatorial Africa. So in the 1930s, French nationality law changes to say that being Metis becomes a grounds for petitioning for and claiming French citizenship. And this is a very remarkable turn because French law actually, in theory, views race as a non factor in terms of determining French identity. That because in the French kind of mythology, racism is something that doesn't occur. Everyone has natural access to rights, and so therefore there's no such thing as race and therefore racism. To see in this law, though, the idea that there is a thing called race is a huge shift in French policy. So with these laws that are passed, and it literally trickles down to individual colonies in French West Africa, first it starts in Madagascar, French West Africa, and very last to French Equatorial Africa, is it says that if you can prove that you are Matisse, and you can define this by very by varied ways, according to culture, the language that you speak, that you had a French upbringing, then you can claim citizenship. And it's not naturalization, because the idea is not that you are naturalizing into French citizenship, but that you were French from birth by virtue of having a French father, and that it just needs to be proven so you can gain citizenship. And so I knew this law had been passed. And so when I first started research to see, okay, well, which Metis people applied for this, who actually got it, what were the contours of gaining the citizenship? I was doing a lot of research in France because in the French archives, you have these books, if you will, that tell you it has, year by year, the names of people who gained French citizenship through naturalization. I couldn't find any of these names. And it just befuddled me because I would meet individual people who would tell me that their grandfather or grandmother had gotten citizenship. But one of the things I discovered at some point when I was in Dakar doing research is that these were petitions that were supposed to be adjudicated and decided upon in individual colonies. And. And the decisions were sent to France. So this was in and of itself a citizenship or apart or separate type of citizenship, because it was adjudicated in the colonies. So one of the things that I found is in individual colonies, let's say again, in Senegal, Gabon, not huge numbers of people, but perhaps about, let's say, 200 people across French West Africa. And a couple of hundred people in French equator Africa petitioned for this, but it depended on which colony we were from. So there are a couple of things that I found. One is that colonial officials were extremely reluctant to actually even grant French nationality, Even though the law stated that it was granted. There continued to be a lot of gatekeeping for individual colonies Where French people would say, yeah, but this person is not sufficiently French because they actually live a la indigen, or in a native way, Meaning that either the food that they ate, the materials with which their houses were constructed, or their French was not sufficient enough. So there are all these ways to kind of not grant citizenship. The other thing that occurred is that you had to prove, like an individual petitioner had to prove all kinds of things. Where they were born, they even had to prove that they actually had a French or European father. Because in French West Africa, your father had to be French. But in French Equatorial Africa, the law was different in that your father just had to be European. So there are also these ways in which if you were of a European, had a European father but not French, you could still gain citizenship. So because you had to find all these documents to prove your schooling, again, the degree up to which you spoke French, it actually took years for these petitioners to amass all of the documents. And so you had to be very, very persistent. But the sleight of hand that would occur is that you had to prove that you had a French or European father Without the document actually naming a very specific French person, Because the French were very worried about individual French men, therefore opening up the door to their children having claims for inheritance or to claim their name. So I think one of the things that I found is that to a certain extent, I feel like there was not a lot of debate of what the consequences of this law would be. So one of the things that occurred is that even though a petitioner who was successful could therefore, let's say, say their last name was rigueur. No. Or a different French name, you had to have the word dit d I t in front of it, which means otherwise known as. So you couldn't even claim the actual Name of the person. So I think, though some people were successful in the hundreds of gaining French citizenship, one of the things that I found, it wasn't full French citizenship. So there's a story that I tell about, again, all the various years and years of complications and gatekeeping that. That went on to even gain citizenship. And then the story and the continued debates and the claims that occurred after people gained citizenship to get what they saw as full French citizenship.
- [29:57]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that definitely sounds like quite an arduous process and sort of clearly purposefully meant to be a gatekeeping exercise as well. So thank you again for helping us understand the contestation nature of it. It keeps coming back. Right. It's not just sort of the state says one thing. People are like, well, hang on a second, we're gonna make this work. Or vice versa. As we move through the time period you cover, to what extent does this change, for example, after World War II? I mean, that's a really key moment for loads of places that then become independent countries. For example, in Africa, does the sort of politics of the impact of World War II and its aftermath impact these questions around identity, rights and race that we've been discussing?
- [30:39]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Absolutely. World War II is a pivotal moment for the reconfiguration of colonialism and then also the relationship between France and. And its colonies in Africa. But I'll speak specifically about French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, which is where my research is placed. So to a certain extent. I mean, I don't think it's to a certain extent. I think it's a very sound argument that multiple scholars have made that if it were not for that Africa basically came to the rescue of France during World War II. And so one of the things that occurs is as mainland France itself is occupied by the Vichy regime. And Charles de Gaulle says from London that he is the leader of Free France, and that Free France is the true France, without the ways in which Felix Eboue, who at the time was the governor, I believe, of Ubangi Chari, or what's known as Chad today. I believe.
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Felix et Bouillet himself comes from, is of African descent, in that he comes from what was French Guyana in the Caribbean at the time. So he's a black colonial official, but a full French citizenship because people from the Ancien colonies were full French citizens. He rallies and says that he is going to support de Gaulle. And so because of this, then de Gaulle actually has a real territory to claim that he is the leader of. And Brazzaville becomes the capital city of Free France at the time. So I think because of this, then what is happening on the African continent and the ways in which, again, particular.
- [32:32]
There are the recruitment of soldiers from places like Senegal, Gabon, throughout the French West Africa, who are recruited into the French army and who are battling and actually are key to France kind of winning this battle. So because of this, one of the things that I trace is how Brazzaville in the post World War II period also becomes, I think, the center of debates about what this new citizenship will be. So the other things that occurs after World War II is that in theory.
- [33:05]
All people in French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa become French citizens. This is one of the kind of concessions or acknowledgments that France makes about the ways in which its colonies really came to its rescue during World War II. And so because in theory, all people across French Africa are no longer, quote, indigenous or native, then a question that comes to the forefront is what does this citizenship format say mean? And why are there multiple forms of citizenships, if you will, for people in Africa? So during the war itself, Metis people in Brazzaville are contesting the fact that they have what one person refers to as second class citizenship. And they argue that there is one form of citizenship for white French people or for Europeans, and they get a different form of citizenship. And in terms of the goods or the rights that citizenship comes with, and some of these are social rights. And so I'll give you an example of like ration cards. So there's this moment during the war where the issue of who gets ration cards for butter becomes something that is at the forefront. And this is not inconsequential. Remember, at this time, there are a lot of deprivations that people are undergoing in terms of getting food. And there's a letter writing campaign that a Matisse association in Brazzaville begins to say, why are people who left therefore are of Germans are getting rationed cars, and we are not. We fought for France, we were soldiers, we lost, we. We shed our blood, and we're not getting the very same things. And some people are also calling out the racism that they're experiencing when they are trying to go into particular public spaces or when they're trying to get a taxi. So there is the beginnings of this campaign that we want French, full French citizenship. On the other side, one of the things that occurs is that particularly around Eboue, who is a black Frenchman, begins to articulate that the existence of this Metis citizenship actually points to colorism or racism that is existing in terms of French citizenship in terms of particular rights for citizenship for black Africans and different citizenship rights for Metis citizens. So one of the things that this raises is also differences in terms of color in French citizenship and the ways in which some of the claims that Matisse made themselves could be called racist in that they are arguing to a certain extent for more rights than other Africans have because of their both French and African descent. So there are ways in which there are very complex debates and articulations of racial identity and also complex debates and articulations of plural forms of racism or racisms that are occurring around citizenship Shopping is hard, right?
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
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- [37:00]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
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- [37:06]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
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- [37:08]
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- [37:13]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
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- [37:15]
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- [37:18]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
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- [37:55]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, it's in fact this kind of idea of comparison that I'd like to continue discussing because in some of the things you were telling us earlier, you made some comparisons between what was happening in French colonial places in West Africa but also what's happening elsewhere in the French Empire when we're talking now in this Post World War II context of, for example, Metis in West Africa, kind of going, well, here's the hierarchy or comparison that we're seeing, sometimes literally in terms of colourism. Was there a comparison also that they were making around Metis in other aspects of the French Empire?
- [38:31]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Absolutely. So one of the things that's also occurring in the post World War II moment is that there's just a lot of debate, many convenings and meetings held with some of the people who become the leaders of political parties. So in the aftermath of World War II, the French to begin to allow Africans to form political parties, and there's a lot of union work that's going to. And then the representatives of these parties, who, many of whom become the first leaders of independent nations, are flying back and forth between places like Dakar, Abidjan, Paris, having debates with the French about what it's not the end of colonialism, but rather a more equal footing and political organization amongst Africans. And French people will look like Metis themselves are also having similar meetings and. And Matisse continue to say that they have a differing sense of identity and connection, again by blood and family to France. And so therefore this necessitates different forms of negotiations. So there are two congresses of Metis that occur in the. I believe one is in.
- [39:55]
The 1940s and the other takes place in the 1950s. So one of them takes place in Brazzaville, which is very symbolic because Brazzaville was also the place where this very famous meeting took place after World War II, where de Gaulle was there, Eboille was there, all of these French colonial officials that were supposed to reconfigure what colonialism meant. So for Matisse to hold their first congress there, it's is very symbolic in terms of having political legitimacy. So Metis themselves at these two congresses are trying. Are beginning to claim that Matisse identity is an identity that crosses across French west and Equatorial Africa. And therefore they are a legitimate social and political group, if you will, that can make particular claims in this moment on reconfiguring what is the relationship between Africa and France. And so one of the things that occurs at this congress is inviting people who are Metis, or I use the term multiracial elsewhere in the world. So whether it is Metis people or multiracial people from what is today the DRC or the Democratic Republic of Congo, or multiracial peoples from South Africa and also multiracial peoples from Andoshin, and one of the things that occurs at the second congress is that one of the organizers of the congress, Nicolas Rigonot, that I talk about in the last two chapters, forms an alliance with a woman by the name of Dilou in Germany who is trying. Who has organized, and a, quote, orphanage for the children of German women and African American men. And so the second congress of Metis actually takes place outside of Frankfurt, and with Dilou, Henri Gonaud, kind of working together towards this idea that being multiracial is an identity, that the fact of having a parent of one race and a parent of another is this identity that is global and is a separate identity, and that there is advocacy that can take place for multiracial people. So one of the ways that this is significant is this invocation of this global identity, that it doesn't matter what colony that you're from, Colonial, non colonial, that being multiracial itself, again, is a particular identity and therefore a particular social category of political advocacy and so on. But it's also this idea where Metis in French west and French Equatorial Africa are no longer needing to mediate. The French nation is no longer their only mediator to claim a stage on the. To claim a place on the world stage. And they are beginning to talk to other groups of people, other organizations, other nations, and therefore bypassing the colonial, the French state altogether.
- [43:05]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
These congresses are really interesting. I was so fascinated to read the details of them in the book. So thank you for giving us at least an introduction to them here. Obviously, I can't ask you to read out, like, entire sections of the book, but very interesting to hear about these sort of organizations across different parts of the empire, especially because there's a lot of other organizing going on at this point. Right. This is when we're seeing international conferences of all sorts of things. We've got black rights movements going on, We've got decolonizing movements happening. Are the Metis conferences just involved in that, or is it happening in a different sphere?
- [43:43]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Yeah, they're happening in different spheres. And I think one of the reasons why. One of the things that I'm finding often when I'm reading the documents of. Of individual Metis associations that rise in places like Gabon, Congo, Senegal, the Ivory coast, is that. That there's this tension between this association saying, you know, we're not political, we are not political organizations. We are just asking for moral rights, for social rights, and we are apolitical. And the contrast that when you are claiming rights, it does become political. So first of all, there's this constant. We're apolitical we're apolitical. And yet there are political implications for the rights that are being asked for. And at the same time, once you get from individual Metis associations to ones where they cross colonies. So at some point there are. In French Equatorial Africa, there does become just Metis associations of French Equatorial Africa. When there's the scaling up from a local association to one that is regional to the point where by the time we get to the 1950s, there is an association of Metis across what the. The name becomes the association of Euro Africans of across Black Africa at some point. So when there's the scaling up of claims, then that's when I think the French colonial state becomes very, very worried. One of the other things that's really fascinating about what's occurring in French Africa, I would say, is that I don't always think that there's an anti colonial. Anti colonial mobilizations are not always asking for the end of colonialism, decolonization, if you will. And this is something that another scholar named by Fred Cooper, has talked about really deeply in one of his books. And it's this idea that decolonization was not the end point. I think for a lot of Francophone political.
- [46:00]
Leaders of many of these political parties, that there was this idea of a more equal relations, but this idea, there was this acknowledgement that these. That French colonies couldn't stand on their own. And this idea that what we're going to end with at 1960 was going to be individual nation states was not the case. So I think the same is true for Metis organizers. There's this idea that what they wanted was the French to live up to those, in theory, rhetorics of what colonialism was supposed to be, that it was this idea that colonialism or that the French and African relationships were supposed to be equal, equal respect for cultures, kind of marching hand in hand, if you will, to establish particular ideas about governance, civilization and culture. So Matisse would say, we know better what French civilization is supposed to be about. And it's supposed to be about equality, it's supposed to be about morality. And we are asking the French to actually live up to these tenets with which we ourselves believe. And so one of the things that occurs in one of the congresses, for example, is the organization is beginning to invoke, for example, the Declaration of Human Rights, the fact that the UN exists at this point and is saying we know what universality is supposed to be like and we want the French to just abide by it. So it's never this end, this idea that they want colonialism to come to an end. But it's rather give us our due rights that we, that we are due as people who are French by blood, as people who have French fathers, as people who are French citizens, we want to be equal players. And in that way that is actually in keeping with what else is going on between, quote, between black Africans. So not the end. And so to a certain extent, what occurs in 1960 where we have independence nation states is a surprise both for Metis organizers as well as elsewhere in the African continent where there's anti colonial mobilization.
- [48:12]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
What of these legacies do we still have from the organizing amongst the Metis, from any of the colonial policies? Obviously we know decolonisation is not a moment of independence. Right. It's a very long and in many cases ongoing process. So do we still see remnants or hauntings of any of these things you're telling us more recently even now?
- [48:35]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Yes. So I think this isn't. It depends on. Because one of the things that my book argues is that I think other scholars who looked at this as have focused so much on colonial policy or the French state as the kind of driver of how these movements do or don't gain traction. And one of the things that I show, it's actually what's happening locally, what's happening in individual African regions that trace how some of the ideas do or don't take traction and how individual African societies are articulating racial identity and political mobilization. So I think this is not to say that I don't argue that in my book. I don't argue that every single person, you know, let's say all of this group born in French west or Ecatella Africa at this time thought of or articulating for themselves as French, that these are very particular people that I'm following. But I do think one thing that dies off is this idea of Matisse identity as kind of a Pan African identity. Because by the time we get to the 1960s, let's say in the post colon moment, this association of Euro Africans across French Africa, it dies down like it no longer exists. That kind of mobilization goes away, for example. But I think, and I think it goes away in part there's this law that is passed, passed after independence that if you were not French, I. E. You did not have, and it's individual countries now, independent nation states actually passed this law with France that if you were not a French citizen prior to colonialism, you can't claim it now. And so I think because this kind of dies down, there's no reason for it to necessarily exist anymore. There are no more claims to be had to a certain extent. And I think that many people are fully immersed in their independent nations, in kind of nation building. However, though, I think that there are resurgences of this, and I'll tell you why it's that even in the aftermath of me writing this book, I do get messages from people who say, you've written about my grandfather or my great grandfather. I didn't know this story. Can you tell me more? And so I think one of the things that I really love about narrating history, it's the ways in which it kind of. It does impact the present. And for people to see their stories told is something where they feel seen and heard to a certain extent, and they can more fully articulate their place in the world. And. And I think one of the other things that occurred is during COVID there was this documentary that appeared on France 24 about a group of Metis individuals. And it was actually a black Ivorian man who wrote this book about a French orphanage that had existed in Abidjan because he had also grown up in this orphanage. It became an orphanage for children of all racial identities in the aftermath of colonialism. And with him writing this book, it unearthed how there's a group of Metis individuals in the Ivory coast who at some point were suing the French government for paternity rights and the rights to be recognized. So this movement hasn't died down with colonialism, and I think it just has ebbs and flows as people just feel a sense of wanting to know fully this universal question of who am I and where do I come from? Who are my family? And there are also movements happening, for example, in the Belgian Congo or the former Belgian Congo, today.
- [52:30]
The drc, and also in Belgium, where the Belgian state is recognizing the ways that they kind of kidnap, to a certain extent, multiracial people. So I think we're in a moment where people, again, are just trying to trace their families and identities that is making this story the story that I thought that had died in 1961, that's still relevant in the 21st century.
- [52:54]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, it's very interesting to see how that's definitely history, but also relevant to the present, too. So thank you for helping us see those connections. Can I ask as a final question, what you might be currently working on? Obviously, the book came out in 2023. We all know it takes a while to publish things, so is there anything you currently have on your desk you want to give us a snap preview of yes, absolutely.
- [53:16]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
So I'm still very much interested in family history because when I think the family is such, and it's all its myriad of forms and diversities is often the kind of building block of so many societies. And I want to continue researching the family in the kind of francophone African sphere precisely because there's a way in which I want to talk about human beings in the past as full living human beings who had hopes, dreams and desires and were trying to live their lives fully. So I'm actually working on two different book projects. One is a more micro family history of a family, of a multiracial family that crossed the boundaries between France, Cameroon.
- [54:04]
Parts of the Congo, and this single family kind of pushed back, if you will, to a certain extent of these histories of separation and formed a really transnational and multigenerational family group across colonial and post colonial boundaries. I'm taking the story into the 21st century. The second thing that I'm working on is actually a family history of Capaisial. This is a much more personal project because I'm born in Haiti and, and it's going to be a biography of the city of Capaisia through writing my own family history. So it's continuing these kinds of. So oftentimes you say that the relationship between a former colony and the quote, metropole is an it's complicated relationship. So it's a story that's going to go across France, the African continent, Haiti, to talk about the ways in which people build a sense of meaning and belonging through the ways in which family and politics often intertwine. And that one's going to take me quite a bit longer to write because I have a lot to learn.
- [55:17]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, they both sound like absolutely fascinating projects, so best of luck with them both.
- [55:21]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [55:23]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
In the meantime, of course, while you are off pursuing those interests, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Race, Childhood and Citizenship, published by Cambridge University Press Press in 2023. Richelle, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [55:42]
Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Thank you, Miranda. I really appreciate this conversation and I hope people get to know more. People get to know this work.
- [56:02]
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Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [56:21]
Marshall Po
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [56:22]
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Dr. Rochelle Jean Baptiste
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