Officer Landeroin

Whilst perusing old issues of La Dépêche coloniale illustrée on Gallica, we came across an article on Tchad that included a photograph of Moïse Landeroin, the interpreter of the Tilho Mission. His role was very important for the historical section of their report, Documents scientifiques de la Mission Tilho, 1906-1909. As an interpreter, one must carefully excavate his process and how his recording of traditions reflected both colonial authority and the interests of local elites. It would be a worthy endeavor to revisit his work and methodology and compare with the research methods of British and German colonial officers and administrators in the region.

Francisque dit Omore

We are always on the hunt for more information on Borno and its Diaspora across the world, especially before the 19th century. Whilst perusing digitized French National Archive records of the 18th century slave and free people of color population living in metropolitan France, we encountered Francisque dit Omore. He was, by 1777, a free man, married to a white laundress, and working as a domestic in Paris for the marquis de la Solard. Unfortunately, piecing together more of his life and origins in Borno is difficult. However, it is exceedingly likely that he was a victim of the trans-Saharan slave trade. However, unlike many black Africans trafficked to Tripoli, he did not end up shipped to the Levant or Turkey. Instead, he was sold or transported to Malta, where a Frenchman, Pons-François de Rosset de Fleury, purchased him. This European man brought him to France by 1757, where he continued to work for Fleury until his death in 1774. By 1777, it is clear that Francisque was a free man, married to a European woman, and could sign his name. Intriguingly, he chose to sign it as Omor instead of Francisque or Francois. If Omor was an attempt at writing his name in Borno, perhaps Umar, then he still preferred to identify by his original name despite 20 years of living in Europe as a baptized man.

Sadly, trying to uncover more of Francisque dit Omore's Bornoan origins will be very difficult. His age is difficult to establish with certainty. If he truly was 39 years old in 1777, then perhaps he was born in 1738. Alternatively, if he was registered in 1762 as "Francois" of "Borno" as a "lackey" and slave of Fleury, he may have been born in or around 1734. It is probable that he was indeed from Birni Gazargamo, Borno's vast capital city with an even vaster district that encompassed many settlements. Regardless of when in the 1730s he was born, Francisque dit Omore was lived through troubled times in Borno. According to Nur Alkali, a drought that lasted several years coveredthe period of 1738-1753. With drought came famine, including one remembered during the reign of Dunama Gana (r. 1744-1747). Moreover, the drought led to population shifts of nomadic populations like the Jetko, Tubu, Koyam, and Fulani. Undoubtedly, a period of continued drought, famine, and pressure on both nomadic and sedentary agriculturalists probably triggered conflicts, including some that led to slave raids and kidnappings. When one considers the signs of weakness in the face of Tuareg and other raiders or the eventual loss of Borno control of the salt trade at Bilma by 1759, it is perhaps understandable how Francisque dit Omore of Birni Gazargamo may have been captured or sold into slavery during such an unstable time.

Algeria: Colonialism and Race

Patricia Lorcin's Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria is an interesting study of how colonialism shapes constructs of race in a North African context. Examining French colonial sources from 1830 onwards, Lorcin traces the rise and fall of the "Kabyle Myth" that divided the population of Algeria into two "racial" groups: savage and irredeemable Arabs and Kabyle Berbers who were seen as "white," more civilized because of their sedentary lifestyle, allegedly less devout Islamic practices, fewer restrictions on women, lower incidence of polygamy, and presumed origins among "white" peoples. This binary division of "good Kabyle" versus "bad Arab" collapsed with the rise of settler colonialism in Algeria, which, as Lorcin elucidates, led to a general stereotype and racial discrimination against all "native" Algerians by the end of the 19th century

Anti-Islamic sentiment among the French, the shift from military to civil administration, and white supremacist pseudoscience of the 19th century all contributed to the "Kabyle Myth." Kabyles, imagined by the French as "noble savages" and compared to Germanic tribes of the distant past, were assumed to be capable of elevation under French law and tutelage, ignored their Islamic devotion, and even applied Saint-Simonianism as the intellectual bedrock, according to Lorcin. Even physicians contributed to the racialization of Algerians, dividing Algerians into Kabyles and Arabs. Arabs, as pauperization under colonial rule progressed (including disastrous famine), were racialized as thieves, rapists, savages, lazy, stupid and considered unreliable. Racial discourse from the French even linked "beauty" to advanced civilizations, thereby labeling Arabs as physically unattractive while praising the alleged racial "purity" of the Berbers.

Lorcin's analysis also traces a colonial sentiment of France as a "New Rome" in North Africa and the Mediterranean. This form of neoclassical colonial development facilitated the rise of European settlers, who, as Europeans from lands once held by Rome, could be seen in a new light as proper heirs to the Roman Empire in North Africa. Orientalism and Arabophiles among the colonial intellectuals and administrations also shaped discourse on race, albeit always within the pro-colonial framework. The French association of the Kabyle Berbers with "whites" also played into this, and contributed to the problems and ethnic conflict in contemporary Algeria given the strong forms of Berber nationalism and violence in the Kabylie region. Although one might suppose its obvious, the importance of European colonialism in shaping local constructs of race or even creating and separating identities is quite powerful in the Algerian case, with drastic consequences here and other African nations after decolonisation.