Shades of Whiteness: Petits-Blancs and the Politics of Military Allocations Distribution in World War I Colonial Cochinchina

Abstract

During World War I male French citizens in Cochinchina whom the colonial government had drafted to fight in Europe left their families behind in the colony. Through a complicated subsidies process, the government offered financial assistance to families impoverished by the draftee's departure and the concomitant loss of income. Far from being a monolithic category, the colony's poor white applicants, also known as petits-blancs, received varying government subsidies, depending on their family configurations. This article argues that the military allocations council's judgments correlate with the petits-blancs applicants' relationships to indigenous people and their adherence to traditional gender roles. To guard white prestige, the colonial government effectively penalized petits-blancs applicants who deviated from behavior associated with whiteness. In 1917 a mobilized soldier named Pierre L.-a resident of Cochinchina, a French colony in southern Vietnam-received an allocation of 45.0 piastres per month, or 1.5 piastres per day, with which to support his family while he was on duty in Europe.1 Military allocations were part of a colonial program to support families suffering economic hardship after their male heads of household had been drafted to fight in Europe.2 As wives assumed the leadership role of their homes, the families suffered financially. Because Pierre L. was a French citizen, his family was eligible for this program. His wife, T. Thi Hay, appealed to the military allocations council for an increase in her subsidy, which she

What Makes Systemic RacismSystemic?

“…Once Whites are charged in the white habitus, it is quite difficult for them to cross racial lines even when they have the demographic opportunity to do so. Second, racial subjects are not uniformly manufactured as White (for an international case, see Firpo 2011) or receive equal benefits from their racial affiliation. Hence, although all Whites receive a better deal compared to racial others in the same race‐class‐gender location, most experience “marginal whiteness” (Bonilla‐Silva 2019a; Rich 2010).…”