Foreword / by Frederick Cooper -- Introduction -- Le métissage: a colonial social problem -- An imperial question -- A threat to the colonial order -- "Reclassifying" the métis -- The law takes up the "métis question" -- Nationality and citizenship in the colonial situation -- The controversy over "fraudulent recognitions" -- Investigating paternity in the colonies -- Citizens by virtue of race -- The force of law -- The effects of citizenship -- Identities under the law -- French nationality and citizenship reconsidered -- Conclusion
Summary
Europe's imperial projects were often predicated on a series of legal and scientific distinctions that were frequently challenged by the reality of social and sexual interactions between the colonized and the colonizers. When Emmanuelle Saada discovered a 1928 decree defining the status of persons of mixed parentage born in French Indochina-the métis-she found not only a remarkable artifact of colonial rule, but a legal bombshell that introduced race into French law for the first time. The decree was the culmination of a decades-long effort to resolve the "métis question": the education
Notes
Originally published in French as Les enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l'Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté
