| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Eric T. Jennings. Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–1944. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2001. Pp. vii, 311. $55.00.

The influence of the Vichy regime in modern French history was slow to emerge. Even as more work was done on this period, which many would have preferred to forget or downplay, little work was done on how Vichy affected the French empire. This excellent book by Eric T. Jennings opens up a field that has received scant attention even from French scholars of empire who tend to dismiss it, particularly in terms of its significance for any understanding of French decolonization. Yet this book has more to offer than a detailed understanding of the Vichy regime's impact in various parts of the empire. 1

Vichy's imperial program was significant because it took place away from the influence or direct control of the Nazi conquerors and cannot therefore be ascribed to the alleged necessity of trying to deal with or even fend off the dictates of the regime in Berlin. This undermines the argument that collaboration was sometimes geared to avoiding the worst excesses of the Nazi occupier and did not involve enthusiasm for the right wing or even fascist ideas adopted by the Vichy regime. Refuting this is perhaps the key argument of the book, which looks at the reasons for and consequences of the policies followed by the colonial authorities in Guadelope, Indochina, and Madagascar. The National Revolution was not only carried out enthusiastically by officials in Paris and in the overseas territories but adapted to fit with existing cultures in a form of "association," meaning the separation of indigenous and metropolitan traditions, as opposed to the republican rhetoric of "assimilation." . . .

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