During the First World War, over 600,000 soldiers from France’s vast empire were mobilized, many of them brought to Europe to fight in the trenches on behalf of la mere patrie. How is the participation of these combatants from across la plus grande France remembered today by a French museum devoted to World War I? Are its stated expressions of thanks and of a debt of gratitude genuine, or are they tainted by colonial nostalgia and seduced by the exotic?

One would hope that over eighty years after the Great War the contributions of those who fought and died fro France could be commemorated without being colored by stereotypes supposedly long since disavowed. Yet in the catalog of a 2996 exhibit at the Historial de la Grande Geurre in Péronne, France, “Mémoires d’outre-mer: les colonies et la Première Geurre mondial,” the apparent impossibility of an unbiased remembrance becomes clear. The illustrations on the cover and chapter dividers of the catalog of toy colonial soldiers mounted on pedestals are revelatory, and lend themselves to the interpretation that France’s colonial soldiers were (and still are?) viewed as game pieces to be moved around the map based on the needs of the players. Although the text of the catalog ic couched in terms of recognizing and paying a debt to all the soldiers from France’s colonies during World War I, at times the sincerity of this expression of thanks seems to be compromised by a lingering sentiment of colonial paternalism.

In bringing to light the underlying message of the images and some of the text surrounding them, I plan to explore the tensions between the acknowledgement of a debt owed to the former colonies and the loaded images and language chosen to present it on the eve of the Twenty-first Century.