Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire: The Colonial Politics of Population

This edited volume focuses on social welfare and medicine within the French Empire and brings together important currents in both imperial history and the history of medicine. The book covers a broad period from the 'first colonial empires' that existed prior to 1830, the 'new imperialism' of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the process of decolonisation in the mid-twentieth century, and the 'afterlives' of colonial regimes in France and newly-independent states. Building on recent scholarship, this volume examines the extension of imperialism into the post-colonial period. The chapters examine a range of topics developing our understanding of the reasons why colonial states saw the family as a site for biopolitical intervention. The authors argue that experts built a racialised body of knowledge about colonial populations through census data and medical understandings of problems such as child mortality and infertility. They show that by analysing and compiling data on fertility, population growth (or decline), and health, this fuelled interventions designed to ensure a stable workforce, and that protecting children and mothers, vaccinating vulnerable populations, and creating modern, sanitary housing were all initiatives also aimed at serving larger goals of preserving colonial rule. Finally, the book shows that social welfare projects during the French Empire reflected concerns about race, differential fertility, and migration that continued well after decolonisation

Intro -- Series Foreword for Margaret Cook Andersen and Melissa K. Byrnes, eds., Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire: The Colonial Politics of Population -- Praise for Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Tables -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Colonial Reckoning: Population, Power, and Liberty in the French Atlantic, 1660-1787 -- Children of the State -- 1660s: The Soldier-Settler in French Canada -- 1680s: Vauban Considers the Soldier-Settler -- 1760s: The Soldier-Settler Confronts Military Loss -- Religious Liberty After 1763 -- Conclusion -- 3 Pensioning Pondichéry's Enfants and Orphelins: Social Welfare and the French East India Company in Eighteenth-Century French India -- I -- II -- III -- 4 "Free and Naturalized Frenchwomen": Gender and the Politics of Race on Revolution-Era Bourbon Island -- Defending Whiteness -- Whiteness Through Marriage -- Marriage Politics and the Revolution -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Documented Marriages Between Blancs and Libres -- 5 Lipiodol and Fertility Medicine in Interwar Colonial Algeria -- Lipiodol and Fertility Medicine -- Dr. Laffont and the Sterility Clinic of Algiers -- Race, Gender, and Fertility Medicine -- Race, Medicine, and the Origins of Infertility in the Colony -- Fertility Medicine in Colonial Morocco -- Infertility and France's Civilizing Mission -- Conclusion -- 6 Rituals of the Matrice: Maternal and Infant Protection in French Colonial Cambodia -- Conceiving the Oeuvre -- Prenatal Care -- Early Pains of Colonial Obstetrics -- At the Roume Maternity -- Attacks from Across the Tonle -- Conclusion -- 7 The Colonial Origins of Mass Prophylaxis as a Public Health Panacea -- Introduction -- The Interwar Social Hygiene Problem and Its Pastorian Solution.