• Citer

Colonial Sexual Violence in (World) Wartime: Evidence from Belgian-Congolese Courts-Martial (1914–1918, 1940–1945)

par Lauro, Amandine
Référence 50th Congress of the French Colonial Historical Society (25-27/06/2026: University of Maynooth)
Publication Non publié, 2026-06-27

Communication à un colloque

• Détails
• Contenu

Résumé :

This paper investigates the gendered dimensions of military violence within the broader history of colonial security regimes in colonial (Belgian) Congo. It focuses on the Force Publique (the colonial army)’s deployment during the campaigns of both World Wars, when Congolese troops operated across multiple African and Middle Eastern territories - primarily Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania during World War I, and Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, and Palestine during World War II. Drawing on previously unexplored military court archives, the paper examines wartime sexual violence in these campaigns and interrogates the specificities of wartime circumstances: both those that enabled—or failed to enable—sexual violence to enter the colonial archive, and those that fostered distinct dynamics around sexual violence and its accountability. It argues that the blurred boundaries between “wartime” and “peacetime” in colonial contexts challenge the notion of wartime as an exceptional moment for sexual violence, inviting us to think more critically about the complex relationships between gender, military power, and colonial governance, and to underscore the need for more empirical studies of sexual violence in African colonial settings.