Colonial Suspects

Kathleen Keller is an associate professor of history at Gustavus Adolphus College.

• AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsA Note on TranslationsIntroduction1. “A Vigilant Surveillance”: Creating Suspicion in Interwar French West Africa2. “Proceed with a Discreet Surveillance”: The Investigation and Surveillance of Suspects3. Enemies, Charlatans, and Propagandists: Foreigners under Surveillance in AOF4. “Powerless with Regard to Our Nationals”: Policing Frenchness and Redefining the Civilizing Mission in AOF5. Creating Networks: African Suspects, Radical Politics, and Colonial RepressionConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

"[Colonial Suspects is] an important work and an in-depth study of colonial policing."-Fabienne Chamelot, African Studies Review "Keller's well-written book examines the history of colonial surveillance in interwar French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale FranÇaise, or AOF), with an emphasis on Senegal and Dakar, the capital of AOF. Based on a large number of archival sources from Senegal and France, her study is situated primarily within the historical literature about French imperialism, occasionally taking into account works in political, social, and literary theory. . . . Keller's study is an important and insightful addition to a growing field of works that bring together the history of colonialism and that of global surveillance."-Daniel BrÜckenhaus, Journal of Interdisciplinary History "Kathleen Keller offers a tightly framed account of the efforts of the French imperial state to maintain surveillance of individuals deemed suspicious in French West Africa between the world wars."-Gregory Mann, American Historical Review "Colonial Suspects makes an important contribution to our understanding of how colonial states operated and of how anticolonialism emerged at the interstices of empire. But it is also the beguiling set of characters, the colorful primary sources, and the vivid style with which Keller brings them all to life that make this book worth reading-not only for specialists of West Africa, but for students of colonial history and of police history more broadly."-Michael Goebel, Journal of Modern History "Keller provides some fascinating insights into how police information was categorized and organized and how networks of administrators shared information on suspicious travelers from different parts of the empire. . . . That Colonial Suspects has raised many new questions is testament to its importance."-Richard Roberts, International Journal of African Historical Studies “Colonial Suspects explores the obsessive French colonial preoccupation with constructing otherness, monitoring outsiders, and persecuting those at the poorest margins of white society. From high-profile criminal cases to intimate lives, the book offers a fine-grained perspective on the culture of suspicion pervading the policing of subversion-real and imagined-within France’s West African colonies after World War I.”-Martin Thomas, professor of history at the University of Exeter and author of Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 “Colonial Suspects breaks new ground and has compelling tie-ins to current debates over surveillance that will resonate with students and academics in the field. One of the most exciting things about it is how it shows that interwar French West Africa was in some ways a global crossroads.”-Elizabeth A. Foster, associate professor of history at Tufts University and the author of Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal, 1880–1940