In 1931, Audrée Delmas concerned French colonial authorities. She was a Frenchwoman who was traveling alone through rural areas in Africa, even by canoe. Her activity was suspicious enough to merit surveillance. Why? Kathleen Keller's Colonial Suspects explains the reasons. The book examines the monitoring of “suspicious persons” in French West Africa during the interwar period. Keller argues that a “culture of suspicion” emerged during the interwar period about threats to the French Empire. In urban areas, colonial administrators imported techniques of surveillance from metropolitan France and began to intercept mail, shadow suspects, and interview people as part of an extensive intelligence-gathering effort motivated by fears, but limited by the rights of French citizens and évolués. This “discrete” surveillance by the colonial government produced hundreds of files about people, some political radicals who shared ideas at infamous cafés and others who existed on the margins of French society. The perceived threats to empire ranged from radical politics to perceived abnormal behaviors, as colonial administrators worried about foreign nationals, Islamic conspiracies, the global rise of communism, and the aspirations of educated Africans, among other things. By exploring the archived files of around 400 suspects, Keller sheds new light on the ideas and practices of French West Africa in the interwar period.
In Colonialism in Question, Frederick Cooper challenged scholars to take what it meant to “think like an empire” seriously. Colonial Suspects does just that. Keller's chapters on the nature and limits of surveillance explore both the operations and ideals of French West Africa. The colonial government was forced to accommodate both French republicanism and French imperialism. The different types of status people held within the empire, from citizen to subject and varying by place of origin, prescribed the limits of surveillance. The category of “suspect” itself did not align neatly with other colonial categories, like race, class, and gender, and is, therefore, an excellent point of entry for understanding empire. Colonial Suspects also shows the uneven distribution of power and control within the colonies. For example, the “Westernized” areas of Dakar frequently got surveilled, but the “African” areas barely at all. Keller's explication of perceived threats to the empire does the most to show how the French Empire thought during the interwar period. Historians have often looked at postwar nationalist movements, but the Colonial Ministry in Paris was most concerned with varieties of pan-Africanism and communism. Colonial Suspects can help scholars better understand the goals and concerns of French West Africa and French colonialism during the period of association.
If the nature of surveillance shows the priorities and practices of the French colonial government, the surveilled themselves show the ideas and actions of people that did not align with the government's vision of a stable society. Two of the most interesting chapters are the fourth and fifth, which look at the surveillance and activities of metropolitan French nationals and “anti-French political networks” led by Africans. In Chapter 4, one catches a glimpse of many interesting characters, such as Pierre Magard, who claimed business interests and connections but seemed to be busiest about portraying himself as an adventurer and attempting unrealistic schemes. This chapter demonstrates how easily non-conformity could be considered suspicious, but it also shows how French people sought to experience and make use of the colonies personally, outside of the broader imperial project driven by the government.
Chapter 5, “Creating Networks”, describes the existence of indigenous resistance to the French imperial project in French West Africa during the interwar period. This chapter helps to fill a gap in scholarship, which has tended to focus more on post-WWI nationalism or the influence of radical politics in France. Keller highlights groups like the League for the Defense of the Negro Race, founded by Lamine Senghor and Tiémoko Garan Kouyaté, and their efforts to spread their message, through correspondence, meetings, and their paper, La Race Nègre. The surveillance and home searches by the colonial government demonstrate both the perceived threat and the real reach of the anti-colonial network. This network and others suggest the existence of a subset of the population who were not only personally unhappy with the colonial government but increasingly moved to organise and potentially action. The surveillance files also show the importance of nodes of transportation, such as ports and railroads, in spreading propaganda and building networks. As Keller successfully argues, French West Africa was increasingly “becoming a global crossroads of people and ideas”.
Colonial Suspects is an informative read but does, at times, leave the reader wanting more. Some limitations are simply due to the sources. The information about the men who carried out the surveillance is limited, and some suspect files are concise. The book thoroughly examines surveillance in French West Africa, but more could be done to place that surveillance in context with what was happening in metropolitan France or other French colonial possessions. One also wonders about the consequences and implications of surveillance. How often did monitoring lead to punishment for suspects who were engaging in radical politics? How were suspects affected socially? These questions are discussed but not fully answered. Though surveillance was very discreet, it was also most effective in the interwar period. The author could say more about why that was the case and what constituted “repression”.
Colonial Suspects is a useful addition to the field and can be of interest to many scholars. The interwar period was one of cultural upheaval for most countries that participated in WWI, but an exploration of that time rarely includes colonised areas outside of nationalist movements. Keller brings French West Africa into the conversation in a fascinating way by highlighting what the colonial administration considered threatening to the colonial project and French prestige. Colonial Suspects will also be useful to historians interested in French West Africa or colonial practices generally. The book reinforces scholarship on the importance of the divide between urban and rural in the colonies and shows the importance of different legal statuses within the French Empire. The information about suspects shows the efforts of Africans to organize and resist colonial injustices and authority. Lastly, for scholars interested in motivations and practices of surveillance, Colonial Suspects provides a case study about French West Africa. It can help illuminate the role of monitoring in empires.
