This article discusses the infamous Bataillons d’Afrique to which French former criminals were sent to complete their duty of military service. The ‘Bat d’Af’ were created to prevent the young male bourgeoisie from having to mix with these ‘undesirables’ and ‘reprobates’, and they were stationed well away from the mainland in France’s North African colonies. This article discusses themes such as discipline, punishment, torture, homosexuality, interracial power relations, and delinquent ‘cultures’ in this imperial context.
LucasC (1878) La Transportation pénale ou la politique du débarras: rapport verbal à l’occasion de la notice publiée par le ministère de la Marine sur la Guyane française et la Nouvelle-Calédonie. Orléans: Colas.
17.
Mac OrlanP (1933) Le Bataillon de la mauvaise chance: Un civil chez le Joyeux. Paris: Éditions de France.
18.
MillerP (2003) Down but not out: the antimilitarist left in the Aernoult–Rousset Affair 1909–1912. French History17(2): 172–85.
19.
MosseG (1998) The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20.
PierratJGuillonE (2004) Les Vrais, les durs, les tatoués. Paris: Larivière.
21.
Prévost-ParadolL-A (1869) La France nouvelle. Paris: Michel Lévy.
22.
SarrautA (1931) Grandeur et servitude coloniales. Paris: Sagittaire.
23.
SurkisJ (2006) Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France 1870–1920. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
24.
ThorneS (1997) ‘The conversion of Englishmen and the conversion of the world inseparable’: missionary imperialism and the language of class in early industrial Britain. In: SolerLCooperF (eds) Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press.
25.
La Vie illustrée (1902) 24January.
26.
ZwangG (1975) La Fonction érotique. Paris: Laffont.
