Studying the life of Mamadou Racine Sy, who was a pioneer for black soldiers in the French army, sheds light on the ambiguities of the relationship with “natives” during the colonial era.
The first black soldier in the service of France to reach the rank of captain (in 1883) and to receive the rank of officer of the Legion of Honor (in 1888), Mamadou Racine Sy constitutes an exception among the very many soldiers recruited by the French army in West Africa (the "Senegalese tirailleurs") during the colonial period, between the 1850s and the 1960s.
His thick personnel file, preserved in the Archives of the Army, as well as his photographic portraits, which have survived, distinguish him from the tens of thousands of anonymous skirmishers who fought in French uniform between 1857, the date on which Faidherbe created the first battalion of Senegalese skirmishers, and African independence a century later.
Fighter, interpreter, diplomat and administrator, Mamadou Racine was an essential auxiliary to the French colonization of Senegal and, above all, of Sudan (name given at the end of the XNUMXe century to a territory essentially corresponding to present-day Mali) in the second half of the XNUMXe century, but the archives also reveal the extent of the reluctance he had to overcome to acquire stripes and awards.
An illustrious stranger
Mamadou Racine is one of the few African auxiliaries of French colonization whose name and image have not been forgotten.
Famous in colonial circles in the second half of the XNUMXthe century, he is, according to the colonial administrator Alfred Guignard who participated in the conquest of Sudan, a "hero of the black troops and of the Sudanese epic, whose name is found on each page of our conquest".
There are, however, many gray areas concerning the biography of Mamadou Racine, who left no writing, apart from a few letters and reports addressed to his hierarchical superiors. The oral family tradition, collected by his grandson and biographer, Seydou Madany Sy, has not made it possible to lift the mystery of certain aspects of his life, which the historian must resolve to grasp through sources written exclusively by colonizers. In this, Mamadou Racine's exceptional career does not allow him to escape the many biases and shortcomings that characterize the history of "native" auxiliaries of French colonization.
Mamadou Racine's civil status is subject to a certain number of variations over the pages of his personnel file. His first name was for a time spelled "Mahmadou" by the French officers, an error that the person concerned rectified in 1888 in an official letter. As for his family name, Sy, it does not appear in any military document. Neither his date nor his place of birth (he would have been born in 1838 or in 1842 around Podor, in Senegal) are known with certainty and his registration number changed three times.
From his life before the regiment, however, we know that he was the son of Élimane Racine, chief of the village of Souyouma, who maintained good relations with the French colonizers. Through his mother, Seynabou Rabi Bâ, Mamadou Racine is related to the nobility of Bosséa, a region in the northeast of Senegal. After having followed religious studies, Mamadou Racine worked for a time as a Koranic school teacher, before enlisting in 1860 as a simple soldier in the corps of Senegalese skirmishers, created three years earlier by General Faidherbe. There is nothing to explain this decision, but the Sy family tradition attributes it to a quarrel between Mamadou Racine and his father, who even proposed to the head of the Senegalese skirmishers to recruit ten young people who were in his service at the place of his son, without success.
The slow military rise
Between 1860 and 1895, the year of his retirement, Mamadou Racine gradually climbed all the ranks of his military career, taking part in most of the operations of conquest, first in Senegal, against Ahmadou Cheikou, head of the Toucouleur empire. , and its ally Lat Dior (in the 1880s), then in Sudan, against the almamy Samory Toure) (between 1880 and 1898), who ruled a powerful state in the Niger region. He distinguished himself in 1883 during the capture of the fortress of Daba, during which he was wounded in the thigh and he was present during important battles such as that of Koundian in 1889 and that of Ségou (capital of Ahmadou Cheikou) in 1890.
His registration file traces the main stages of his promotion by arms. Appointed corporal in 1865, then sergeant on August 9, 1866, he rose in 1868 to the rank of native second lieutenant, a rank which at the time constituted the pinnacle of the skirmishers' career. His rise slowed from that date. Indeed, if the officer ranks are theoretically open to natives since the creation of the corps of Senegalese skirmishers in 1857, their actual obtaining is limited by the very low number of native officers existing in the companies of Senegalese skirmishers. Mamadou Racine therefore had to wait twelve years before being promoted to native lieutenant in 1880.
The three years that separate his promotion to the rank of lieutenant from his appointment as captain can be explained by the very numerous reservations of the high command and French military institutions, as attested by the letters kept in his personnel file. Mamadou Racine, as a "French subject" (the colonized populations of the empire being excluded, with very few exceptions, from citizenship), can only serve as a "native title", which implies a higher advancement. slow and limits the possibility of promotion to the highest ranks of the army. However, the decree creating the body of Senegalese skirmishers did not originally provide for the job of captain with an indigenous title. This gap is not due to chance: the military authorities are reluctant to place French non-commissioned officers under the orders of an African officer.
Neither Mamadou Racine's record of service nor his awards, rarely awarded to colonial subjects (he was the first black to receive the title of Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1869) were initially sufficient to overcome this legal obstacle, and it took all the insistence of Colonel Borgnis-Desbordes (one of the main actors in the conquest of Sudan and the fight against Samory) as well as several years of interdepartmental correspondence for the rank of captain to be given to him. finally granted on an exceptional basis, in 1883.
He is, moreover, attached to the staff of the superior commander of Upper Senegal, where he does not exercise effective command, which in fact resolves the main obstacle to his promotion. In 1888, at the end of a new controversy between the military institution, which wanted to see Mamadou Racine gain new distinctions, and the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor, who was more reluctant, he was the first black to access to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honor, as a reward for the exceptional services he has rendered to France.
An ambiguous figure as an intermediary in colonization
Mamadou Racine belongs, in the same way as the local guides and interpreters essential to the colonizers, to the category of indigenous intermediaries of colonization.
As soon as he was hired as a tirailleur, he understood the need to learn to read and write French, which he quickly mastered. In 1878, he obtained permission to go to Paris to visit theWorld Exhibition. On campaign, he quickly adopted the codes of sociability in force among French colonial officers, whom he received, according to Major Étienne Péroz, with "an excellent table, perfectly served in the European style".
If he handles European codes with ease, Mamadou Racine nevertheless retains certain Muslim customs. Thus, we do not know the exact number of his wives (his registration card only specifies that he is married “according to the custom of the country”). One of them, Mariam Inaysa, daughter of Ahmadou Cheikhou, is attributed by Archinard) after the capture of Ségou in 1890, according to a widespread custom in the French colonial army and attested in the memoirs of several officers.
A model soldier, Mamadou Racine also fulfilled the role of guide, interpreter and diplomat, particularly with Samory Touré, then an ally of the French, who entrusted him with the care of his son Karamoko during his trip to France in 1886. A few years later, in 1898, it was he who was responsible for translating to Samory, then a prisoner of the French, the sentence of exile to Gabon pronounced by Governor Trentinian.
Considered as a perfect example of assimilation, Mamadou Racine was however the object of a certain suspicion on the part of several French officers, in particular Gallieni, who considered him "more embarrassing than useful", took a dim view of his professional ascent and criticize its enrichment. In 1872, he was reprimanded for having led prayers at the Bakel post mosque, dressed in a boubou. After his retirement in 1895, Mamadou Racine continued to serve the French as fame (king) of Bambouck, honorary function which consists mainly in transmitting to the populations the instructions of the French administrators of the province.
A conflicting memory
Mamadou Racine died on February 24, 1902 in Kita. In 2011, at the request of his family, his grave was transferred to the military cemetery of French soldiers.
A major player in the conquest of Senegal and Sudan, Mamadou Racine is the subject of a double occultation in French and Senegalese memories. In France, he joins the anonymous cohort of native auxiliaries of colonization, whose memory has been erased by the figures of the great white colonizers. In Senegal, his name is absent from school textbooks for opposite reasons: he is perceived there as a collaborator of the French and as the adversary of the main heroes of the resistance to colonial conquest.
This article can also be found on the website of theEncyclopedia of digital history of Europe (EHNE).
Stephanie Soubrier, Post-doctoral researcher at the Encyclopedia of Digital History of Europe (EHNE) and associate researcher at the Center for the History of the XNUMXth Century, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University
This article is republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.