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Black Republic of Letters

"L'Europe civilisatrice" / "Europe the civilizing"

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"L'Europe civilisatrice" / "Europe the civilizing" Translation:

All of this week's papers recounted the anecdote of which the young Sudanese prince, Abdoulaye, has come to be the hero.

Here, briefly, are the facts:

Abdoulaye, aged fourteen years, is the son of Ahmadou one of those petty African kings who oppose the France's offers of suzerainty with a desperate resistance. He was made a prisoner after the conquest of Segou and taken to Paris by Colonel Archinard, who was directing the expedition. Despite the circumstances in which the young prince was separated from his people, he was taken with a strong affection for the colonel—his accidental guardian—and did not want to be separated from him.

He was confided to the care of Mr. de Sales, architect, living at Bineau boulevard in Neuilly-sur-Seine. All the trouble in the world was taken—as you can imagine—to dress him in the French style and after vainly trying to get him to put on the polished boots that were imposed upon him, he bravely took them under his arm.

But the colonel, needing to travel, used a strategy. Abdoulaye was taken to the Hippodrome. There, taking advantage of a moment when his protege was rapt in the spectacle, the Colonel Archinard effected his escape. The prince fell into despair. Finally, he was convinced to go with Mr. de Sales to his home. But he pondered a strike.

The next day during breakfast, he passed, claiming to be indisposed, into an adjoining room on the ground floor, slipped out the door and disappeared. All searches were in vain.

They telephoned the undersecretary of State, the prefecture and Mr. Goron, chief of the general police. It was thought that he had thrown himself into the Seine. It looked grave.

Finally, in the afternoon, an agent noticed in the Rue des Dames in Batignolles, a young Black crying, polished boots under his arm, and murmuring the name of Colonel Archinard.

The agent brought him to the commissariat where, fittingly, the order was given to bring him back to the home of Mr. de Sales. This was done. It seemed that the young fugitive, who never stopped crying or asking for the colonel, would be the subject of a special surveillance.

It was a small incident, it is true, but very suggestive. The newspaper La France drew wise conclusions from it, which we could do no better than to reproduce here:
That a young man of fourteen years, white or Black, taken from his country and violently separated from his only protector in France, the only interlocutor with whom he is able to exchange a few words in the language of his fathers, seeks to escape from what he sees as a brutal slavery, this is not surprising, also the very fact of evasion is no more than a common incident and altogether European if not Parisian.

But what is much less banal, much more grave, is the physical and moral violence that the unfortunate hostage has been subject to, in the best of intentions, no doubt, but which amplified his mistrust to the highest level and doubled his anguish.

The XIXe Siècle newspaper recounts that, in effect, this unfortunate "king's son," brought into a tailor shop and first invited and then pressed to dress in a complete "high novelty" as well as polished shoes, considered the constraint that was forced upon him to be absolutely beyond him, and that he opposed the ceremony of his distortion with an energetic resistance.

All the good treatment of and all of the assistance of Colonel Archinard must have been completely forgotten in an instant by the young Sudanese who, up to this time treated like a prisoner of war, saw himself for the first time put into the ranks of common prisoners to who are made to wear the livery of the prison.
It can only be one of two thing, in effect: either the son of King Ahmadou is a prisoner of war, and thus should be treated with all the respect due to that conditions, to his misfortune and to his rank; or he is a slave according to the African custom, and thus should immediately become free on arriving on French soil.
In no case should he be forced to break the customs of his compatriots and have the most horrible physical discomforts imposed upon him, under the pretext of inculcating him with the principles of civilization.

Respected in his mores and in his customs, and touched by the affection shown to him, the young Black became the friend almost the child of Colonel Archinard; harmed, submitted to the domination of another order, thwarted in his tastes, hurt in his sentiments, and, we might add, strongly uncomfortable in his armpits, he becomes a rebel, a fugitive, a runaway.

For a government like ours, who is seeking to assimilate Sudan and its kingdoms, it is an error to mistreat hostages and to offer clingy pants and fitted shoes to those we hope to subdue.

May Abdoulaye be left to dress according to his fancy, so he might give a good report to his father. That, it seems, would be worth regiments.