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'To our Colonial Troops, Greetings from the Far-away Homeland': Race, Security and (Inter-)Imperial Anxieties in the Discussion on Colonial Troops in World War One Belgium

par Lauro, Amandine
Référence Revue Belge d'histoire contemporaine, XLVIII-1-2, page (34-55)
Publication Publié, 2018-01-01

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

The beginning of the First World War saw Belgium confronted for the first time with the possibility of using colonial troops on the Western front. While both Great Britain and France recruited soldiers from their colonies for the European theatre of war, Belgian authorities showed little enthusiasm for this prospect. This paper aims to retrace the history of these debates and to connect discourses of inter-imperial comparisons and associated anxieties linked to race, prestige and authority to the final Belgian decision not to authorize the presence of Congolese soldiers on its soil - neither during the war, nor afterwards. While these debates have been disqualified as a “non-event” by the traditional historiography of the First World War, they are treated here as standpoints to question the colonial dimension of Belgium as a belligerent and the impact of both inter-imperial dynamics and of the specificities of Belgian-Congolese racial economies on circulations between the metropole and the colony.