Genesis

The imperial conquests were first and foremost a matter of men: explorers, traders, soldiers, missionaries, administrators. Women, with a few exceptions, joined their husbands only later, which did not come without great upheaval. And these men alone obviously established relations with the girls of the conquered countries, from the first contacts but also in a much more systematic way with the development of imperial administrations, and the permanent installation of administrators or colonists.  These relationships were more or less constrained. The “mousso”, for example, a generic term from the Bambara meaning woman, used to designate the “companions” of Europeans, is a commonplace figure in West Africa.  Were there not also some births in the colonial territories resulting from relationships between European women (nuns, teachers, social workers, wives of colonial officials, etc.) and colonized men? The taboo is strong and the archives perhaps only reveal these types of secrets with difficulty. As Capucine Boidin writes, “The hidden face of male colonial desire was the fear supposedly naturally inspired by the union of the white woman with the colonized man. The presence of this inverse myth could in fact serve as legitimization for an enterprise to eliminate the men of the opposing party, who had become rivals in love.