Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914-1945

"Aliens in Uniform" in Wartime Societies

Eric Storm, Ali Al Tuma

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317330974
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

During the first half of the twentieth century, European countries witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of colonial soldiers fighting in European territory (First and Second World War and Spanish Civil War) and coming into contact with European society and culture. For many Europeans, these were the first instances in which they met Asians or Africans, and the presence of Indian, Indo-Chinese, Moluccan, Senegalese, Moroccan or Algerian soldiers in Europe did not go unnoticed. This book explores this experience as it relates to the returning soldiers - who often had difficulties re-adapting to their subordinate status at home - and on European authorities who for the first time had to accommodate large numbers of foreigners in their own territories, which in some ways would help shape later immigration policies.

Part I
The French Army

1
Islam in the French Army during the Great War

Between Accommodation and Suspicion¹

Richard S. Fogarty

During the First World War, the French Army deployed some five hundred thousand colonial subjects as soldiers, known as troupes indigènes, on European battlefields. More than half of these men—many West African troops and nearly all North Africans (Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans)—were Muslim. Islam was, then, one of the social and cultural facts that Europeans had to confront during the war. The presence of Muslims in the French Army on the Western Front meant that Europeans had to cultivate an approach to Islam in Europe, as well as in the colonies or as a geopolitical and imperial fact. In other words, Europeans had to confront the ‘Muslimness’ of these men.²

This chapter will address two key questions about the religion of ‘aliens in uniform’ in Europe during the twentieth century. First, how and why did Europeans accommodate the religious beliefs of soldiers from the colonies? Second, what role did the religious faith of these soldiers play in motivating or justifying their service, and did calls for or against ‘holy war’ play a role? The case of North African Muslims in the French Army between 1914 and 1918 sheds light on all of these issues. Accommodating the religious beliefs of North African soldiers was a key aspect of French military policy during the war, and the army took measures designed to respect Muslim burial rites, allow Muslim troops to observe holy days, and provide these troops with the ministration of religious figures, all designed to help maintain morale and ensure loyalty. German and Ottoman propaganda sought to call morale and loyalty into question by promoting a ‘jihad’ against the Entente powers. A key component of these efforts was the attempt to convince North Africans to do their alleged duty as ‘good Muslims’, to take up arms against, rather than for, their French colonial masters. French fears about these efforts, and about the reliability of North African Muslims, had important effects on policy, for instance preventing North Africans’ deployment to the Dardanelles to fight against fellow Muslims in the Ottoman Army.

Examining the experiences of North Africans in French uniform during the Great War also helps answer broader questions addressed in this volume. The events discussed here may not illustrate a general ‘European approach’ to the cultural and social consequences of the presence of colonial troops in Europe, but they can help us begin thinking beyond distinct national approaches. The Muslim faith of French colonial troops posed serious challenges not merely because their beliefs and cultural practices were different from most native Europeans but also because Islam itself was contested among the major empires fighting the war: French, British, German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian. Claims to speak for Islam and appeals for the allegiance of Muslims had implications throughout Europe, and indeed beyond. And the experiences of Muslims in the French Army and in German and Ottoman captivity demonstrate vividly that the belligerent powers did indeed differentiate between colonial subjects according to their religion, as well as their ethnicity or race.

The French case is instructive for a number of reasons. The service of about half a million colonial subjects, primarily from North and West Africa, Indochina and Madagascar, constituted the first large-scale presence of non-whites in Western Europe.³ The French and other colonial powers had for a long time recruited colonial subjects for military service in imperial locations outside Europe, and the British even deployed Indian soldiers in Europe during the first year of the Great War. But only France, whose colonial empire spanned the globe and was the second largest in the world after Great Britain’s, brought hundreds of thousands of men to live, fight and work for years on end in the metropole itself. The French Army had a long tradition of recruiting colonial subjects, and it had even deployed eight thousand Algerians (known as ‘turcos’, a name deriving from the historic military presence of the Ottoman Army in North Africa) in France during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. But the service of so many non-European soldiers in Western Europe itself, plus that of some two hundred thousand workers who laboured in France during the war, set the first modern precedent for the migration of millions of people from these same former colonies to France and elsewhere in Europe later in the century. The presence of these men posed many acute questions for Europeans on issues ranging from racial hierarchies and colonial control, to linguistic and cultural differences, to sex and love across the colour line, to the nature of citizenship and national identity. One of the cultural differences was, of course, religious belief. Then, as now, Europeans confronted not just differences in belief, but European anxieties about the place of Islam and Muslims in European societies or, in this instance, in the French Army.

Accommodating Islam

Muslim soldiers in the French Army included men from both West Africa and North Africa. The faith of West Africans posed less of a problem in the eyes of French officials because of predominant attitudes among French and Europeans about West African Islam, often known as islam noir to distinguish it from the Islam of the ‘Arabs’ of North Africa. Put briefly, conventional wisdom held that West Africans’ attachment to Islam was less rigid and ‘fanatical’ than that of North Africans.⁴ Moreover, West Africans serving in the French Army included both Muslims and animists (whom the French called fétichistes), so policies towards West African soldiers could not be monolithic but had to account for a diversity of religious belief and practice.⁵

North Africans were, in the eyes of French officials, different. Islam was a factor in shaping some policies towards West Africans, but in many ways, Islam was the most important factor by far in shaping policy towards soldiers from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. This stemmed in part from clear evidence that North Africans were cognizant of their religious identity and that many framed their experience in the French Army in terms of what it meant to them as Muslims. French officers repeatedly observed the importance of faith to their men and to the army’s efforts to maintain morale among them. And letters from the soldiers themselves confirm this, such as that written by Tunisian tirailleur (a term, loosely meaning ‘infantryman’, designating colonial subjects in uniform) Djilani ben Smail in 1917, who noted the importance of ‘our holy religion, which is for me a source of internal joy and resignation, during the sad days we are going through’.⁶ Yet army policy also focused on North African soldiers as Muslims because of a long tradition in France, predating the colonial experience in the region but also shaped and intensified by it, of viewing the ‘Arab Islam’ of North Africans as inherently fanatical, politicized and impervious to outside influences, particularly the progressive and modernizing influences of French colonialism.⁷ This in turn shaped and reinforced a tendency to view the Muslim identity of North Africans as the primary, often the only important consideration when formulating colonial and military policies towards them. They were above all, in some ways ‘only’, Muslim.⁸

Given the real and perceived importance of religious faith to North African soldiers, officials made special efforts to accommodate Muslim religious beliefs within the French Army. Authorities felt especially vulnerable to criticism on these issues, because it was crucial both to maintaining morale and to combating German and Ottoman propaganda that tried to expose as false France’s claims to be acting in the true best interest of Islam. Many soldiers’ complaints focused on the difficulties military service and the war created for the observance of Muslim customs. A Tunisian soldier charged that the French and the Bey of Tunis had forced men to serve, to leave their homes, to serve among infidels and to die alone and miserable without a friend or family member to make proper burial arrangements. For an observant Muslim, to be buried ‘in a tomb in a strange land, in a land of infidels’ without a proper sepulchre was particularly painful.⁹ Public criticism of France for failing to respect adequately the needs of its Muslim soldiers was even more dangerous. In a propaganda tract published under the patronage of the Germans and the Ottomans and distributed internationally, an Algerian deserter named Lieutenant Boukabouya made much of the ‘desecration of Muslims’ religion in the French ranks’, which he claimed would certainly shock all Muslims ‘in their most intimate convictions’. Among the ‘religious assistance of which Muslim soldiers have been totally deprived during the war’, he wrote, were the means to follow sacred customs, such as burial procedures and rites, the opportunity to celebrate holy days and keep the fast of Ramadan and the guidance of religious figures (whom he called, curiously, ‘priests’).¹⁰ In fact, efforts in the army to accommodate Islam were particularly focused on these three key areas: burial rites, the observance of holy days and the provision of clerics, imams, to minister to soldiers’ religious needs while serving in France.

Burial of the dead was an obvious concern for many soldiers facing death in a faraway, non-Muslim land. One Algerian soldier, for instance, lamented the placement of Muslims and ‘unbelievers’ in mass graves at the front.¹¹ French officials recognized this as one of the most serious issues they faced in using Muslim soldiers. In 1916, an Arabic pamphlet entitled ‘Contempt for the Muslim Religion in the French Ranks’ charged the French Army with neglecting the proper obsequies for the Muslim dead. This provoked a senator, head of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, to warn the government that, given the attachment Muslims had to their faith and to the care of the body after death, ‘Our enemies could not find a subject more likely to overexcite Muslim fanaticism’.¹² Resident General Lyautey had sounded a similar warning from Morocco earlier in the war. In October 1914, he wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to report the widespread impression in Morocco that Muslims were buried not according to Muslim traditions, but at the same time, in the same place and with the same ceremonies as Christians. In order to counter such dangerous rumours, Lyautey suggested leaving the rituals and interment to fellow Muslims in the unit, and when that was not possible, to do nothing contrary to the religious beliefs of the deceased. Unless the French wanted to face a very grave problem with public opinion in North Africa, the Ministry of War should ensure that Muslim personnel helped their comrades with funeral rites.¹³

Officials in Paris were already aware of these problems, and the Minister of War had in fact already issued orders stipulating the procedures for burying Muslim soldiers a few days before Lyautey sent his warning. The order noted that it would be a good idea to avoid any ‘ceremony having a religious character’ when fellow Muslims were not present to administer the proceedings. The minister also reminded subordinates that these soldiers were to be buried in a shroud, not a coffin, in accordance with Islamic custom.¹⁴ Yet these were hardly specific or complete guidelines, and the reliance on other Muslim soldiers to take care of their own dead was certainly not adequate once it became clear that the war would not end as quickly as many had initially believed and that there would be more dead, including Muslims, than anyone had imagined. Hence, in December 1914, the Minister of War issued a new order detailing the proper administration of last rites, preparation of the body and burial of the corpse oriented southwest-northeast, on its side, with the face pointed towards Mecca. Muslims were also to have distinctive grave markers, not a cross, with inscriptions in both Arabic and French (a detailed illustration accompanied the order). The instructions ended by stating, ‘This memorial, which we owe to our Muslim soldiers who have died for France, is easily achievable’.¹⁵ This was probably the case in rear areas and hospitals, but it depended upon the goodwill of local commanders and administrators, and it is likely that at least some Muslims did not benefit from this scrupulous treatment when they died in the chaotic conditions of the front lines.

Still, to maintain morale among Muslim troops and to counter propaganda claims to the contrary, French authorities were careful to institute policies that would demonstrate their respect for one of the most sacred rites associated with Islam. There were also attempts to publicize this sensitivit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• Introduction Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914–1945
• Part I The French Army
• Part II The British Army
• Part III The Spanish and Dutch Armies
• Bibliography
• Index