Dislocations of empire: colonies de vacances and estivage in Protectorate Morocco, 1912–1956

ABSTRACT

This article considers the origins and evolution of colonies de vacances and childhood and youth estivage (summer leisure) in Morocco, over the lifespan of the French Protectorate. It will show how these practices manifested, and sometimes challenged, the social and spatial separations that were inherent to the Moroccan colonial order. The colonies served as enclaves of a kind in the earlier period of the Protectorate, designed to secure European ‘childhood’ amidst purportedly adverse climatic and social/political conditions. Over time, the colonies and estivage became the object of new investments, in line with the broader historical conversion of childhood and youth into a ‘field of action’ and arena of political contestation. In the post-1945 period, incipient colonial crisis compelled a greater opening of these sites and practices to under-represented categories of young people–Muslim, Jewish, female. Conflicts arising from this inclusion reveal how the dislocation that was inherent to colonies and estivage practices hadn't – and really couldn't – be reconciled with the prevailing social order, as happened in France.

KEYWORDS:

• Vacation colonies
• summer camps
• empire
• leisure policy
• childhood and youth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Laura Lee Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land: Working-Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Julien Fuchs, Le temps des jolies colonies de vacances: Au Coeur de la construction d’un service public, 1944–1960 (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Septentrion, 2020).

2 H. Laborde, ‘L'Importance pédagogique des colonies de vacances’, International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education 4, no. 3 (1958): 346–359.

3 Laborde was following French convention in not recognizing these as official categories; for historical and contemporary context see Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

4 Little has been written on the colonies as a trans-colonial institution, and colonial legacy. A rare exception is Fradj Ben Chokri, ‘Une Page de l’action laïque en Afrique du Nord: l'exemple des colonies de vacances et des auberges de la jeunesse en Tunisie (1908–1955)’, Outre mers, Revue d’histoire tome 98, no. 366–7 (2010) 219–238.

5 The most direct inspiration to this article's line of inquiry is Eric Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology and French Colonial Spas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); and Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Unmaking of French Indochina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

6 Paul Félix Armand-Delille, L'école de plein air et l'école au soleil, (Paris: A. Maloine et Fils, 1921); Dr. L. Léopold Philippe and Louis Gauthier, De l'air, de l'exercice, de l'eau, du soleil : questions d'hygiène et d'éducation physique individuelles (Paris, 1920).

7 For comparative perspective on American summer camps, see Abigail Aires Van Slyck, A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1880–1960 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2006); Leslie Paris, Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp (New York: NYU Press, 2008).

8 Lyautey's phrase was ‘régéneration de la race en la prenant à sa base’(race regeneration by the roots); L’Afrique Française: Bulletin Mensuel du Comité de l’Afrique Française, January 1, 1921, 196–7.

9 The historical literature on Lyautey and his role in the Protectorate is vast; see in particular Daniel Rivet, Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat Français au Maroc, 1912–1925 (Paris: Harmattan, 1988). For the broader context of changing French colonial policy in Morocco, North Africa and beyond in this period, see Charles Robert Ageron et al., Histoire de la France Coloniale, 1914–1990 (Paris: A. Colin, 2016).

10 L’Afrique Française: Bulletin Mensuel du Comité de l’Afrique Française, January 1, 1921, 196.

11 ‘L'Oeuvre d'une Française en l'Afrique du Nord’, Comité du Maroc, Renseignements coloniaux et documents publiés par le Comité de l'Afrique français, 1931, 124–5.

12 See Alice Conklin, ‘Redefining Frenchness: Citizenship, Race Regeneration and Imperial Motherhood in France and West Africa, 1914–1940’, in Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism, ed. Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1998), 65–83.

13 Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 84.

14 Spencer Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology and Muslim Resistance, 1912–1956 (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

15 Georges Hardy, ‘L'Education Française au Maroc’, Revue de Paris 28 (1921) 781.

16 Georges Hardy and Louis Brunot, ‘L'Enfant Marocain: Essai d'ethnographie scolaire’ (Paris: Emile Larose, 1925), 5, 13–14.

17 Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN) 3MA/900/59, Letter from Dir of Collège Musulman de Fès to Dir. Gén d'Instruction Publique, July 21 1923.

18 CADN 3MA/900/59, Letter from L. Brunot to Director of Muslim Collège of Moulay Idriss, June 26 1928.

19 Mahkzen was the designation for the monarchial government of the sultan, which formally retained sovereignty under the Protectorate arrangements.

20 The European population increased by 50% in the three years of Théodore Steeg's Residency (1925–8), growing 10% a year from 1926 to 1931; John Damis, ‘Developments in Morocco under the French Protectorate, 1925–1943’, Middle East Journal 24, no. 1 (Winter 1970): 76.

21 David Pomfret, Youth and Empire: Trans-Colonial Childhoods in British and French Asia (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2015). See also Shirleene Robinson and Simon Slight, Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World (London: Palgrave, 2016).

22 See for example L’Afrique du Nord Illustrée, August 16, 1930, 2.

23 David Pomfret, ‘Beyond Risk of Contagion: Childhood, Hill Stations and the Planning of French and British Colonial Cities’, in Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene and Cultures of Planning in Asia, eds. Robert Peckman and David Pomfret (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2013), 81–103.

24 Margaret Cook Andersen, Regeneration through Empire: French Pronatalists and Colonial Settlement in the Third Republic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2013).

25 See for example the opening allocution of Paul Lachenal, Conférence internationale des colonies de vacances et oeuvres de plein air: compte rendu et rapports (Paris: Le Mouvement sanitaire, 1931), 5–9.

26 Pradourat Debbasch, ‘Les Colonies Scolaires de Vacances et les Œuvres de Plein Air en Tunisie’, Conférence internationale des colonies de vacances et oeuvres de plein air: compte rendu et rapports. (Paris: Le Mouvement sanitaire, 1931), 200–212.

27 Comité National de l'Enfance, Congrès international pour la protection de l'enfance (Paris: Impr. Beurk, 1935).

28 L’Echo d'Alger, June 1, 1934, 4.

29 CADN 2mi/2351 Jean Fénéon, ‘La création des villes d'altitude’, mémoire de stage, 1944.

30 L’Afrique du Nord Illustrée, August 22, 1931, 7; Le Petit Marocain, May 6, 1936, 8.

31 Le Petit Marocain, August 14, 1935, 4–6.

32 Le Petit Marocain, August 15, 1934, 6.

33 Le Petit Marocain, May 15, 1936, 7.

34 Laura Lee Downs, op. cit.

35 L’Afrique du Nord Illustrée, June 8, 1935, 12.

36 CADN 13MA/900/793, ‘Equipement sportif-terrains des sports’.

37 Protectorat de la République Français au Maroc. Direction Générale de l'Instruction Publique des Beaux Arts et des Antiquités: Historique (1912–1930), 73–6.

38 CADN 3MA/900/59, ‘Culture Physique, Associations Sportives, Distractions’.

39 Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Badell·PoweIl and the Origins of Boy Scouts Movement (Collins, 1986). On the Algerian Scout movement, which was the most important in North Africa, see Chikh Bouamrane and Mohamed Djidjelli, Scouts Musulmans Algériens (1935–1955) (Algiers: Dar El Oumma, 2010).

40 CADN 2mi2346 Mémoire de fin de stage, A. Brucker, 1945, ‘Les Mouvements de Jeunesse en Milieu Marocain’.

41 CADN 3MA/900/59 Letter from L. Brunot of Dir Gén de l'Instruction Publique, December 2, 1935.

42 Lucette Heller-Goldenberg, Histoire des auberges de jeunesse en France des origines à la Libération : 1929–1945 (Nice: Centre de la Méditerranée moderne et contemporaine, 1985).

43 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, ‘Comité Central Laïque des Auberges de la Jeunesse au Maroc’.

44 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, ‘Auberges de la Jeunesse: Filles du Soleil’; Le Petit Marocain, February 1, 1938, 7

45 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, ‘Letter from 3rd Collège to Residence Général’, July 1937

46 Le Petit Marocain, May 22, 1936, 5.

47 Protectorat de la France au Maroc. Direction de la santé, de la famille et de la jeunesse. Service de la jeunesse et des sports. Deux ans d'activité (Casablanca, 1942). See also Marianne Lassus, Jeunesse et Sports: L'Invention d'un ministère, 1928–1948 (Paris: INSEP, 2017).

48 Le Petit Marocain, June 1, 1941, 3.

49 Margaret Cook Andersen, ‘The Office de la Famille Française: Familialism and the National Revolution in 1940's Morocco’, French Politics, Culture and Society 34, no. 3 (Winter 2006): 44–62.

50 CADN 1/MA/1 95, Cabinet Civil, ‘Union des Familles Françaises’.

51 Le Petit Marocain, July 5, 1941, 1.

52 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, Service de la Jeunesse et des Sports, ‘Rapport au Sujet du Séjour au Maroc des Jeunes Français’, October 10, 1941; ‘Projet de Recruitment des 250 Jeunes Français qui Doivent Passer l’été au Maroc’, April 14, 1942.

53 France Ministère de l'Intérieur, Informations Générales, September 30, 1941, 963.

54 CADN 21 MA/2/2, ‘Visit of General Nogues to Ras el Ma’, cliches 1768–1799.

55 CADN 3 MA/900/73, ‘Camp des Noyers, Around, 27 juillet au 13 Août, 1941’.

56 CADN 3MA/900/73, ‘Rapports des camp de vacances d'Akekfak’.

57 Anne Raffin, Youth Mobilization in Vichy Indochina and its Legacies, 1940–1970 (Lexington Books, 2008); Nicolas Bancel et al., De l’Indochine à l’Algérie: la jeunesse en mouvements des deux côtés du miroir colonial, 1940–1962 (Paris: La Découverte, 2003).

58 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, Service de la Jeunesse et des Sports, ‘Rapport au Sujet du Séjour au Maroc des Jeunes Français’, October 10, 1941; ‘Projet de Recruitment des 250 Jeunes Français qui Doivent Passer l’été au Maroc’, April 14, 1942.

59 Robert-Charles Ageron, ‘De l'Empire à la dislocation de l'Union française (1939–1956)’; Ageron et al., Histoire de la France Coloniale, 1914–1990 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2016).

60 Richard Ivan Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2017).

61 Julien Fuchs, ‘Promoting a positive image of France. Holiday camps at the service of French foreign and Algerian policy (from 1945 to the mid-1950s)’, Modern & Contemporary France 29, no. 1 (2021): 19–40.

62 CADN 1/MA/200/668 Service de Jeunesse et Sports Bulletin, ‘Conference Mondiale de la Jeunesse, 1945’.

63 Pierre Joulin et al., Vacances en colonie, facteur d'équilibre: une médecine du loisir (Paris: Union française des colonies de vacances, 1957).

64 CADN 1MA/200/616, ‘Procès-Verbal de la Réunion de la Commission d' Estivage du 19 Mai 1947’.

65 CADN 1/MA/1 38 ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 2–3; Rapport sur le Fonctionnement des Colonies de Vacances en 1947.

66 Maurice Nouvel, ‘Les Camps et Colonies de Vacances au Maroc’, Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc 8–9, no. 31–2 (1946) 476; CADN 1/MA/1 38, ‘Éffectifs dans les Camps de SJS’.

67 French education was not gender-integrated until after World War II, so this separation in the colonies was unexceptional; Fuchs, Le temps des jolies colonies de vacances, 317–322.

68 1/MA/1 38 ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 3.

69 Eugène Guernier, dir., Encyclopédie Coloniale et Maritime: Maroc (Paris: Editions de L'Empire Français, 1948), 232.

70 CADN 1/MA/200 668, Bulletin du Service de Jeunesse et Sports du Maroc, J. Nouvel, ‘Du Service de la Jeunesse et Sports en Milieu Musulman’, November 1951, 2.

71 Le Petit Marocain, July 17, 1946 1, 3.

72 CADN 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 13–14.

73 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’, letter of J. Jullien, Conseiller de la République to French Ambassador to the Residency, January 30, 1947.

74 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’, letter of Abbé Gérard to Chef du Service de la Jeunesse, February 22, 1947.

75 1/MA/1 38 ‘Colonie de Vacances d’Ifrane’.

76 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 7.

77 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 3.

78 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, p. 18.

79 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, p. 7.

80 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, p. 24.

81 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 20.

82 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 14.

83 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’ Procès-Verbal de la Réunion des Delegués des Associations des Colonies de Vacances, June 6, 1947, 17, 19.

84 1/MA/200 616, letter of Capt. Chemier, Chef du Cercle d'Azrou to Chef de Région, Meknès, August 18, 1953.

85 CADN 1/MA/200 668, ‘Procès-Verbal de la Réunion du Conseil de la Jeunesse du 27 Mars 1952’.

86 1/MA/1 38, Cabinet Civil, ‘Colonies de Vacances’.

87 CADN 1/MA/200 616, ‘Delegations d'Affaires Urbaines: Note de Renseignements’.

88 CADN 1/MA/200 668, Bulletin du Service de Jeunesse et Sports du Maroc, J. Nouvel, ‘Du Service de la Jeunesse et Sports en Milieu Musulman’, November 1951.

89 Olivia Holmberg Luce, ‘Shaping the Future Elite: A Comparative Analysis of French Policy Relating to Student International Mobility from Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco until Decolonisation’, Journal of Migration History 8, no. 1 (2022): 1–27; see also Harry Gamble, ‘Navigating the Fourth Republic: West African University Students between Metropolitan France and Dakar’, French Politics, Culture and Society 39, no. 3 (Winter 2021): 73–99.

90 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, ‘Circuits de Connaissance de la France’.

91 CADN 1/MA/1/118, ‘Groupements de la Jeunesse’, ‘Liste des Marocains désirant participer au rallaye international des Auberges Laïques de la Jeunesse à Vienne’.

92 Though not the focus here, the bulging French government files on scout and sporting groups (CADN 1MA/200/444) reflect this preoccupation; see also Jakob Krais, ‘Muscular Muslims: Scouting in Late Colonial Algeria Between Nationalism and Religion’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 51, no. 4 (November 2019): 567–585.

93 CADN 1 MA 200 668 ‘Notes de Renseignement: Mustapha Benani, Mohamed Chraibi;’ ‘Chef du Territoire de Marrakech: Bulletin de Renseignement’.

94 CADN 1 MA 10 185 ‘Direction de l'Instruction Publique au Secretaire Général du Protectorat’, September 16, 1949.

95 CADN 1/MA/200 616, Letter of Chef du Service de la Jeunesse et des Sports to Directeur de l'Instruction Publique’, June 23, 1953.

96 CADN 1/MA/200 616, ‘Thermalisme, Colonies de Vacances’.

97 Elizabeth Sloan, ‘Algerian Youth in the colonies de vacances during the Algerian War’, Journal of the Western Society of French History, 40 (2012): 138–148. Yves Denéchère, ’Politique et humanitaire à l’échelle locale pendant la guerre d’Algérie : jumelages et colonies de vacances dans l’Ouest de la France’, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest [online], 124–2, 2017. Lucas Hardt, ‘Envoyer des Jeunes Algériens en France, en RFA et en Suisse’, Revue d’Allemagne et des Pays de Langue Allemande, January 1, 2018, 185–196.

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Patrick Young

Patrick Young is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. His scholarly research primarily addresses questions of place and displacement within Modern French, European and Colonial History. He is the author of Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France (Ashgate), and co-editor of Place and Locality in French History (Bloomsbury). His current project considers the colonial dynamics of le grand air (the outdoors) in Morocco under the French Protectorate, through a variety of sites and practices—children's vacation colonies and scouting, “Alpine” mountaineering and skiing, colonial hill stations and urban parks. He received his M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.