Tract Warfare
Gender and Vietnamese Activism against the 1931 Colonial Exposition
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Abstract
Before the 1931 Colonial Exposition and throughout its six-month run, Vietnamese militants in metropolitan France led an extensive anti-imperialist campaign with the exposition as their focal point. Political ephemera was their primary weapon in the war that erupted between activists who disseminated anti-imperialist texts, the newly-arrived immigrants they sought to recruit, and colonial administrators. This article investigates the role that gender played in the relationship between these groups of men by asking: How did normative ideas related to masculinity and race shape the strategies for the production and dissemination of activist texts? To answer this question, I analyze tracts and papillons, arguing that when Vietnamese militants protested the exposition, they contested dominant visions of masculinity that lay at the heart of the French imperial project.
Contributor Notes
Elizabeth Tuttle is an Assistant Professor of French at Michigan State University, where she researches French political activism—namely feminism and anti-imperialism—in the interwar period with a particular focus on the role played by political ephemera such as tracts, posters, and papillons. Her current book project explores several case studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s in which these texts played a pivotal role. Elizabeth's work has been published by The Journal of the Western Society for French History and Women in French Studies (forthcoming), and has been supported by a Chateaubriand Fellowship.