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During the first world war, more that 140,000 West Africans were conscripted into the French army and served as combatants on the Western Front. This temporary enforced migration of Africans to Europe has never been surpassed in scale over a comparable duration, while the unintended effects of this unprecedented cross-cultural encounter ranged far beyond the outcome on the battlefields. This article examines one critical aspect of this unique experience: racial preconceptions in the French military about West Africans and the consequences that these ideas had for the individual soldiers affected. Important aspects of this question and, notably, Senegalese casualty rates compared with those suffered by the French have been addressed by other eminent scholars, including Marc Michel, Charles Balesi and Myron Echenberg. Although differing in their conclusions, these authors neglect to link the consequences of the application of French race theory to military practices in combat; indeed Michel and Balesi downplay notions of racial differentiation among the French altogether.2 The present article addresses this shortcoming by examining the pre-war debate over expanded military recruitment in West Africa; the evolution of French organizational principles and tactical doctrines concerning the use of West Africans in combat during the war; and the implications of the racial preconceptions in the French military about Africans as confirmed by comparative casualty rates. Such an analysis sheds new light not only on French military views of Africans at the beginning of the twentieth

‘Les Races GuerriÈres’: Racial Preconceptions in the French Military about West African Soldiers during the First World War