Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands of children. These children, mostly born to African women and European men, sparked significant debate in French society about the status of multiracial people, debates historians have termed 'the metis problem.' Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research in Gabon, Republic of Congo, Senegal, and France, Rachel Jean-Baptiste investigates the fluctuating identities of metis. Crucially, she centres claims by metis themselves to access French social and citizenship rights amidst the refusal by fathers to recognize their lineage, and in the context of changing African racial thought and practice. In this original history of race-making, belonging, and rights, Jean-Baptiste demonstrates the diverse ways in which metis individuals and collectives carved out visions of racial belonging as children and citizens in Africa, Europe, and internationally.

Explores the history of race-making, belonging, and rights by outlining the contested place of multiracial people in colonial French West and Equatorial Africa.

About the Author
Rachel Jean-Baptiste is Associate Professor of history at the University of California, Davis. She has previously published Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon (2014), as well as articles in edited books and academic journals. She is co-president of the Coordinating Council for Women in History and serves on the boards of the African Studies Association and the UK editorial collective of Gender and History.

Reviews
'This wonderful book opens up the question of race in Africa in two ways: departing from colonial visions of metissage, it follows instead how multiracial Africans themselves lived, conceived, and debated their identities in the French empire. Secondly, Jean-Baptiste demonstrates that local actors acted first and foremost as global thinkers, inventing forms of multiracial internationalism that still matter enormously today.' Florence Bernault, Center for History, Science Po
'Rachel Jean-Baptiste's study of racially mixed people in colonial French Africa is not just the story of the making of a category but of the men and women who inhabited it, who tried to make their lives within a colonial racial order, and who acted collectively to challenge that order. Her deeply researched account brings out the ambiguous and contested meanings of race, colonialism, citizenship, and community.' Frederick Cooper, New York University
'This is a pathbreaking book that expands the history of childhood and race in Africa and rethinks our methods for studying intimacy and emotions. With case studies drawn from diverse archives, Jean-Baptiste combines a discussion of state welfare policy with attention to children's rights and considers colonial sexualities from the point of view of Africans.' Stephanie Newell, Yale University



Book Information
ISBN 9781108733311
Author Rachel Jean-Baptiste
Format Paperback
Page Count 319
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press