Modeling Racial Control: Managing Asiatique Étrangeres in French Colonial Africa, 1885-1940

Paper Abstract: This paper examines late 19^th-century racial policies in the French colonies of Indochina, Madagascar, and French West Africa through the dual lenses of Sino-French economic competition and French imperial and post-imperial entanglements. Taking as its starting point an Indochinese institution known as the Chinese congrégation, it examines the ways in which French colonial authorities across Africa used their Indochinese experiences to create an institutional model for registering, monitoring, and tracking asiatique étrangères across Africa. Devised in Indochina and applied to Indochina’s overseas Chinese beginning in 1885, the congregation was borrowed in almost identical form and intent from Indochina and became the starting block for monitoring not just overseas Chinese, but all asiatique étrangères, for the duration of the colonial era. Using French colonial archival sources, my paper explores the colonial management of asiatique étrangères in Indochina, Madagascar, and French West Africa, examining variations in French regional colonialism as well as the enduring impacts of transnational economic systems upon African and Asian experiences. In the end, the interpretations and adaptations of this similar form of legislation across global French colonies will shed light upon the variable nature of geopolitical hegemonies across the globe, but also upon the common themes and concerns of French colonial authorities across the broader French empire.