HST427 Captivity and Consequences: Race, Gender and the French Empire, 1940-45

When France was defeated in June 1940 after only six weeks of fighting, over 1.8 million French soldiers became prisoners of war. Among these soldiers were approximately 100,000 men from across the French empire in Africa, the Caribbean, Indochina and Madagascar. The new German occupiers took the white prisoners back to Germany and further east to be integrated into the German war effort, but left the colonial prisoners of war (POWs) in camps located across occupied France - in what amounts to a separation of POWS based on their perceived race. 

In this module, you will learn about the everyday experiences of men and women in and around war captivity and the political and military decisions which shaped those experiences. Students will learn how responses to defeat, capture occupation, and resistance shifted over time and were impacted by race and gender. We will see how the colonial POWS lived, worked, worshipped, made friends and escaped German captivity - and learn why the captivity of colonial POWs was so significant to understanding race and gender and the future of the French empire. You will engage with the entanglement of collaboration, disobedience and resistance while examining how colonial prisoners of war and white civilians negotiated the defeat, German occupation, and divisions in the French Empire between the Vichy Regime and the Free French.  

You will be introduced to a range of primary sources including armistice and peace treaties, political speeches, propaganda, newspapers, captivity reports, and surveillance records; it also addresses a number of historiographical debates on the Vichy regime and French Empire during the Second World War.